Legendary artist Pitika Ntuli calls for return to humanity
PROFESSOR Pitika Ntuli’s legendary career as an artist began with a dead tree.
“I encountered art not knowing that I was encountering it. My uncle was a powerful isanusi (a traditional healer or diviner) who took me to sit in front of an old dead tree and said ‘don’t stand up until this tree speaks to you’. I thought to myself, ‘how can this tree speak to me?’ At that time I was 17 years old. I stood there and when I looked back he said ‘forward!’ Finally I started imagining what if this tree was a human being, what would it look like? I looked closely at the branches – by then I was already interested in the Struggle so I said ‘Viva!’ My uncle said: ‘You have got what you are going to live by; you won’t understand now, but you will understand later’.
“Ten years later as I was walking, I saw a dead tree. I began seeing figures in that tree. I bought a hammer and a chisel, and not taught by anyone else, I began carving. That is how I began sculpting,” he said.
Apartheid sent him into exile in Swaziland and the UK for 33 years. In Britain, he met his wife Antoinette, also known as Nomalanga, and they have three sons and a daughter – Dukuza, Zwelethu, Zwelesizwe (Zee) and Seluleko.
“Without my family I’m nothing. My wife got her name Nomalanga from Credo Mutwa, the big isanusi. My eldest son is a director of the arts in Emalahleni municipality and the second is working for The AVA Gallery in Cape Town. The other one is a film director and advertising director who has recently been voted the best advertising director in the country and my daughter recently graduated with a degree in international relations from Stellenbosch. They are all into political and cultural artistic careers. They could not escape it,” he said.
He has a long list of accolades and his contribution to the development of arts and culture in South Africa includes a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arts and Culture Trust in 2013, while the City of Joburg named him a “Living Legend” in 2012. What stands out for him, however, is his kykNet TV award for Best Achievement in the Visual Arts.
“Seven weeks ago I received a very surprising award from kykNet. That, for me, was far more important because it means that as people and races, we understand each other. My art unites people and to demonstrate that it does, I remember walking with my wife at
the mall and I stopped midway. She asked me if I was all right or feeling dizzy and I said something struck me about my art, painting. I also play the flute and am an academic. Where does this spirit come from? It can’t come out of me being a poor sinner on Earth. Then I said I’m going to go on a journey of hunting my ancestors and my God, solely because I think it is them that are guiding my gift.”
This was when the Azibuyele Emasisweni (Return to the Source) exhibition was born and it immediately grabbed attention when it first opened at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda in 2020. Not only had the 80-year-old artist created 45 new sculptures from bones and other materials but some of the country’s most esteemed poets and musicians responded to the body of work with songs and poems that were packaged for an online presentation of the exhibition during the Covid-19 pandemic. This proved to be a ground-breaking digital initiative that was recognised by the Global Fine Art Awards in 2021.
“I sent a bone like this to Napo Mashiyane. He looked at it and wrote a poem. I sent it to Sibongile Khumalo and she did a poem and a song. In the end we had 30 people collaborating with me without asking for anything. They said the spirit led it to us. That’s why I think art has the power to bring people together across colour, class, sexual orientation and all the other stuff,” he said.
Ntuli spends most of his time creating his art at The Melrose Gallery in Johannesburg. His style is futuristic and rooted in culture and his works grace numerous important corporate, private and public collections.
“Digital is a new medium and voice of art. Anyone in the world can experience my art. Those are the advances of science,” he said.
Of Azibuyele Emasisweni, he said it stemmed from his observation of the state of black lives.
“I looked at what is happening in the world where black lives don’t matter to most. Then I looked at black people and how they have become more Western and have turned their backs on culture, and how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In the past, if you come into my house I don’t ask you how long you’ll be staying, I just feed you. If you enter my field I’d give you tools to plough. When you decide to stay I’d give you a cow, and a piece of land and help you look for a partner. These days when we see foreigners we call them amakwerekwere; we have reversed the way it’s supposed to be. We need to go back to the principles of Ubuntu. Where we cared for others.”
He said when one traces their DNA they find a line of ancestors whose spirit lives in you.
“As a Ntuli, I found that they were the bravest because no Zulu war was fought without them in the leadership. I have taken that spirit but I’m fighting a different war, not of flesh and blood, but of spirit. That’s what is reflected in my art,” he said.
An extensive public programme with workshops, talks and walkabouts will support the Azibuyele Emasisweni exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery, which will run until January.
It can also be viewed on www. themelrosegallery.com.