The Clothes that Maketh the Man
By Julia Wilson (Guest Writer)
Themba Mbuli, winner of the 2016 Standard Bank Young Artist’s Award, cofounder of Broken Borders Arts Project, and cofounder and Associate Artistic Director of Unmute Dance Company, brings to JOMBA! this year his first digital work, ManMade. Yesterday saw Mbuli release the work for the first time, and it seems fitting that it should be released on this platform, at this time. ManMade tackles legacy, inheritance, masculinity, Blackness, and the gender-based violence which has been exposed to the nation in all its horror during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The work is inspired by Mbuli’s grandfather, who, having passed a year ago, has left his legacy in the form of his clothes. Each item holds memory, and through this thoughtful, stark and somewhat painful work, Mbuli investigates his own manhood, interrogating what he has inherited, and what he has accumulated through his life.
The work begins in a stark, unfurnished room with only the cupboards displayed. On the right, there are neatly folded and shelved clothes, while on the left, a nearly-nude, Black, male body is confined in the wardrobe.
As the work evolves, Mbuli searches through the clothing, seemingly seeking something specific: he finds a white dress shirt and dons it. The film cuts to Mbuli wildly whipping the air with a belt, a shocking image after the intimacy of putting on his grandfather’s shirt. A hooded figure, bound and suffocated by the clothes which have been thrown out of the cupboard, writhes on the floor, inducing a panic in the viewer that takes the breath away. The blind rage Mbuli embodies is unsustainable, and he begins to slide across the floor on discarded clothing, falling and flailing as he continues to whip the air. The soundtrack, composed of deep male voices chanting and whistling rhythmically builds in intensity until the tension breaks, and Mbuli continues to dress.
Fully dressed in a formal suit, Mbuli is pictured in a narrow closet, resembling a coffin. Film is used to defy gravity, as clothes fly from the floor out of frame, and Mbuli moves between the cupboard doors frantically before the scene returns to stillness. The clothing is in a pile while the shelves are empty and unleveled.
The film hits a crescendo as Mbuli, nude, twists and contorts in a confined space. He is trapped as the chanting and shouting gets louder, until it breaks into panting. Mbuli lies naked at the bottom of the closet as the doors close on him, clothes scattered about.
In conversation with Dr Lliane Loots, Artistic Director of JOMBA!, Mbuli discusses clothing as having a life of their own in memory. During this bizarre era of Covid-19, in which we have been given time and space under lockdown to literally ‘clean out our closets’, Mbuli began to ask himself what luggage he has inherited.
Gender-based violence in South Africa, the second pandemic, as Mbuli calls it, has been exposed in stark light during this time. “The manhood I know is the manhood I’ve learned from him,” Mbuli explains, and as he has unpacked his manhood, and the gentleness with which he has been taught by his grandfather to interact with those of the opposite sex, he has asked himself where he picked up the habits of not speaking out, of silence. Mbuli is in the act of addressing his own ‘skeletons’.
What is so brave about Mbuli’s work is his willingness to use himself as a mirror to society. As Dr. Loots put it, his work focuses on the personal, and in doing so becomes deeply political. For Mbuli, the first point of departure for a work is himself, and it must have meaning for him for it to have meaning for an audience. Though this means that his process is difficult, and asks him to go to dark places, and be vulnerable, healing and catharsis can be reached through the act of creation.
Mbuli’s next project is with Unmute Dance Company, and entails a month-long digital festival that coincides with International Disability Month. With multiple residencies on the go, and involvement in so many valuable projects, it is inevitable that we will be seeing more of Mbuli’s intentional, personal and deeply moving work soon.
