Lungiswa Gqunta & Lakisha Apostel - In Land We Resonate

In this exhibition by Lungiswa Gqunta and Lakisha Apostel, two experiences of (re)connecting to the earth come together. One excavates, while the other embeds herself into the soil, demonstrating two distinct yet complementary practices directed at creating a sense of belonging.

The artists each depart from their personal experience of displacement. In her video installation, titled after the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956 banning gatherings in open-air public spaces in South-Africa, Gqunta explores alternative forms of gathering in the home as practices of unearthing knowledge rooted in post-colonial South-Africa. Drawing from her own memories as a young girl, she illustrates how the tradition of folding of sheets by women creates an opportunity for collective conversation. Collectivity equally echoes through Apostel’s performance work We Shared a Belly, where the African diasporic experience resonates in her deeply personal efforts to connect to her homeland Curaçao. Demonstrating this longing, she uses sculptures as tools in a ritual to help the uprooted body embed itself into the earth.

At Nest in Laak, the artists push our understanding of listening as a bodily process of tuning into one’s environment in an exhibition that they designed to hold and guide the body in the space. Gqunta and Apostel demonstrate divergent ways of grounding and encourage you to listen closely: what does the earth hold? What does it tell us? What can we hear when we listen decolonially?