MOBILE HOMES
Sekgala’s work is a wistful meditation on migration, writes Bongani Kona
“Because I always feel like running, not away, because there is no such place / Because, if there was, I would have found it by now.”
THESE words from the late Gil ScottHeron, on his last studio recording, provide the title and inspiration for Running , Thabiso Sekgala’s solo photographic exhibition at the Goodman Gallery.
“When I heard this song, especially the first line,” Sekgala says, “it spoke to me about the issue of being a migrant.”
Shot in three cities — Amman, Bulawayo and Berlin — and spanning three continents — Africa, Asia and Europe — Sekgala’s contemplative photographs confront one of the most urgent themes of our time: the displacement and movement of people.
Born in Soweto, and an alumnus of the Market Photo Workshop, Sekgala says the root of his questioning stems from interactions with people in Johannesburg. According to the 30-something photographer, the metropolis is a place where everyone comes from somewhere else.
“When you are in Johannesburg, even people who were born and grew up there refer to home as other places, where their parents are from — so Johannesburg is not regarded as home. I find these dynamics about home interesting. I am fascinated by the shifting idea of home.”
Produced while Sekgala was on various international residencies, Running brings together three series which have been shown elsewhere: Running Amman, Running Bulawayo and Paradise . Although “the shifting idea of home” is a common theme through all the photographs, the different bodies of work are also fascinating for the stories they tell.
The photographs from Bulawayo have an elegiac quality. They depict a city that has been left behind by its inhabitants. Since the turn of the millennium, millions of Zimbabweans have migrated to South Africa to escape the economic and political chaos there. Sekgala probes into this contemporary history and the mark it has left on the urban landscape of Bulawayo, the country’s second-biggest city.
One photograph shows the terrace of a hotel in summer. There is nobody in sight. In the past, presumably, the place would have been crowded and thriving with commerce. In another image, three teenagers stand idle in an empty mall, adrift, like the lone survivors of a shipwreck.
“The town has become what I would call a ghost town,” Sekgala says in the programme notes. The images from the Running
Amman series, inspired by Walid Raad’s photographs of car bombings during the Lebanese civil war, are surprisingly less stark given that at the time of shooting the US was threatening to attack neighbouring Syria. Instead of showing people running, the photographs depict stasis: things and people in states of stillness and calm.
“For me, what was fascinating about the city of Amman is that it has a lot of refugee camps. Some of them were opened in 1948 and have become permanent settlements. There are also new ones arising from the conflict in Syria,” Sekgala says. These are people with nowhere to run to and homelessness has become a permanent feature of their lives.
In Paradise , Sekgala subverts the preconception of Europe and America as the promised lands. The photographs are grey and sullen; devoid of brightness. The world he depicts may not be a dystopia as such, but it’s far from heaven.
“I think photography is my best tool to tell stories. It’s like being a novelist,” he says. “You write about anything you like, either true or fiction. The fact that I was born in South Africa always comes with me, so my work is always informed by who I am and where I come from.”
Wherever that place is.