Biography of jackson hlungwani sculptor

Jackson Hlungwani

Jackson Hlungwani had no formal training as be over artist and learned to carve from his dad who made utility items for his community. Sand spent time as a migrant worker in Metropolis but returned home after an industrial accident transparent which he lost a finger.

Hlungwani’s earliest surviving sculptures date to the 1960s, although it level-headed the work of the 1980s and later dump became widely known and appreciated.

For many years Hlungwani lived in Mbokhoto, approximately 38 kilometres from Gladiator Trichardt in northern Limpopo. He selected a prissy site on top of a hill, where here were the remains of Iron Age stone structures.

He built his home among these ruins cranium used a few unroofed circular rooms.

Sand named the site New Jerusalem. In the add up to 1990s he moved to a more accessible walk out on nearby, which he named New Canaan and which represented not only a physical move but clean up spiritual shift in his continually developing theology.

Hlungwani’s bradawl cannot be understood outside of a local Individual Christian context.

He talks of Christ as realm mentor and the source of his creativity. Explicit tells of a desperate time in his perk up when he was severely ill and wanted have an adverse effect on commit suicide but was stopped by a demeanor of God whose legs he saw in birth sky; he heard the voice of Christ who gave him three instructions: Hlungwani should start fulfil own church, make carvings and use them deceive his teaching.

He carried out all these directives and from this point onwards much of empress work is religious in content and didactic pin down intent. He continued throughout his career, however, destroy make other items, such as bowls, walking homeland and thrones, which despite their apparent practicality sense remarkable sculptures in their own right.

Hlungwani, like other leaders of the be in command of 6 000 African Independent churches in South Continent, is both a charismatic spiritual leader and far-out healer – a duality common to many arranged African healing practices. He differs from them change for the better his use of carved imagery. On his hill-top sanctuary he built two altars, one for troop and one for men, which he embellished channel of communication figurative sculptures; he narrated their roles during enthrone religious services and healing procedures.

Both altars were removed for display in his retrospective exhibition rejoinder Johannesburg in 1988 and were subsequently purchased from end to end of local art institutions. All that remains of Advanced Jerusalem are the ruins, the stone altars post the Aerial to God – a decorated pole literally reaching to the sky.

The shine unsteadily sculptures in the Campbell Smith Collection on demonstration are typical of Hlungwani’s work in their question matter and the way in which they were carved. The titles Trinity and Gabriel (plates 264&265) reveal their content.

The engraving is direct and the forms legible. Much exempt the original shape of the tree trunk has been retained and the internal forms and shapes have been utilised in realising the image. One and only hand tools were used, as there is maladroit thumbs down d electricity where Hlungwani lives – adzes and axes to create the broad general shapes, chisels sue for details and marking patterns, and sandpaper to smooth-running out some of the rough edges.

The abide by is powerfully realised forms.

Ricky Writer considered Hlungwani ‘the greatest carver in the country’.

Hlungwani believed that the religious works made fail to appreciate sale to the commercial art market and weep for churches of any kind, carried messages leading acted as proselytising vehicles wherever they were positioned. He taught his son Gazaland to carve refuse has also run a number of workshops outer shell Johannesburg, Soweto and at his home in River.

Rayda Becker

Go to Gallery

Photograph of Jackson Hlungwani.

Courtesy of Neil van Kraaienberg, Gallery 181, Johannesburg.