Press Release
hygrosummons (iter.01) marks the first UK solo exhibition by South African, Amsterdam-
International Archives 2nd half of 2024
Simnikiwe Buhlungu, hygrosummons
Chisenhale Gallery, London (United Kingdom)
06.09 - 03.11.2024
Conspiring with the conditions of the gallery and materials that hold and release water, Buhlungu transforms Chisenhale Gallery into a porous and changeable site. Departing from the hygrometer—a scientific instrument used to measure humidity—the commission turns away from accuracy, and towards convening, sensing, and misbehaving with water.
Warped wooden doors mark the thresholds between inside and outside, public and private. Submerged in the neighbouring Hertford Union Canal prior to their installation, they are repurposed as rafts for birdlife, homes for pondweed, and to gather water. No longer functioning as intended, the swollen pine doors ask us: what else permeates the space, conspicuously or otherwise?
Samples of puddles taken from four geographical sites—the Tswaing Crater in Soshanguve, Buhlungu’s mother’s backyard maize garden, the Salse di Nirano Nature Reserve in Fiorano Modenese, and puddles outside of Chisenhale Gallery—are distributed across a series of buckets. Leaking, irrigating, and vibrating, they are connected by the hydrological cycle, where a puddle in Johannesburg might travel across the same atmospheric current as another in East London. As the samples reverberate across borders, evaporating into one another, contamination and kinship become indistinguishable from one another.
Two zithers—whose forms are borrowed from Mvets, instruments originating in West and Central Africa—work through an original score. As humidity levels fluctuate, their strings tighten and loosen, creating unstable tonal shifts which are sampled, through playback, to mark the puddles’ arrival and departure throughout the space.
Brick air vents, made with clay from Salse di Nirano’s mud puddles, are incorporated into the walls, and release humidity into the publicly inaccessible spaces of the building. Works on paper, a material that often necessitates controlled humidity, draw in the dampness from the gallery’s exterior wall, disobediently curling to reveal concealed messages – here, water acts as an accomplice.
Buhlungu’s publication, titled besides Puleng; dontsa-
Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s exhibition continues Chisenhale Gallery’s Commissions Programme for 2024–25, which includes exhibitions by Joshua Leon, Rory Pilgrim, and Bruno Zhu. Invitations to witness, gather, and gossip run through the programme, with material and temporal interrogations, built environments, and unscripted chance encounters pushing the boundaries of exhibition making.
Exhibition 06 September -
© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2024 All Rights Reserved
Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Salse puddle (eye) (2), 2024. Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Courtesy of the artist.
