Kemang Wa Lehulere’s richly layered work encourages visitors to gather around it in shared contemplation. This notion of the collective is key to the artist’s broader practice: he became an artist in his late twenties, after many years’ experience as an activist in Cape Town. He established Gugulective in 2006, an artistic platform for performance and social intervention. Both the installations exhibited in the Arsenale and in the Central Pavilion are made from salvaged wood and metal from school desks and chairs. Each element in these works comes together in a web of associations, references, and stories because for Wa Lehulere, personal biography and collective history are inextricable.
