Theatremaker, poet and artist Koleka Putuma is reaching into South African memory like mushroom mycelium.
Standard Bank’s inaugural young artist winner for poetry explores the healing properties of natural psychedelic substances in her multimedia installation, Imvuselelo (revival), at the Monument Gallery at the National Arts Festival.
Imvuselelo is the first iteration by the Theatre of Beauty Collective.
Putuma collaborated with a team of fellow artists to reimagine the connections between psychedelic mushrooms, the mind, and the current sociopolitical climate of the country.
Her 2017 collection of poetry, Collective Amnesia, examines how forgetting can be used as a way to heal trauma. Imvuselelo brings the past into the glowing orange light.
Welcoming her first audience walk-through of her exhibition, Putuma guided the crowd through each chapter on Friday afternoon.
“This project was born out of an interest in indigenous medicines and my own exploration around psychedelics and practices of healing,” Putuma said.
“Once that research started, it prompted a curiosity in me to start thinking about different ways text and text-making can live in-between and around performance, and how else it could live without it being spoken [by me] being physically present.”
Putuma’s poetic prose is printed on hessian fabric, supported by short films projected on TV screens.
A large film projection of performer Lukhanyiso Skosana takes up an entire wall, in which he is dressed as a bulbous blue mushroom head, writhing manically in a white studio space.
“One of the other first things that came was the film created with Hannen Christian,” Putuma said.
“This is what the embodiment of the mushroom would look and feel like.
“It looked at the part of research about psychedelics, the way it has the ability to treat addictions and mental illnesses.
“There are a number of clinical trials happening at the moment that look at the ways psychedelics are being used in therapeutic settings.”
In the same room, a small TV screen plays excerpts from religious gatherings, the parliament precinct, news headlines and public gatherings, all relating to alcohol.
The two instalments play on a loop — the TV screen’s sound bites of politicians saying “I don’t know alcohol. I’ve never touched alcohol” merge with the Skosana’s erratic movements.
"[We were] thinking about South African chaos as a texture. Wanting to create two visual languages that could be in conversation with one another, to explore mushrooms as a medicinal practice in the context of SA, where all of this is happening.”
Moving through a small passageway, the walls are lined with poetry — striking words recall Eastern Cape spaces and events — the graves of children in Dimbaza, dealing with grief from paternal photographs in Gqeberha.
"[We were] thinking about South African chaos as a texture. Wanting to create two visual languages that could be in conversation with one another, to explore mushrooms as a medicinal practice in the context of SA, where all of this is happening.”
— Koleka Putuma
“This work is also me, being in search of trying to connect myself back to parts of the Eastern Cape because I feel over time I’ve lost my connection with the Eastern Cape in different ways, for different reasons.”
The passageway opens to another large gallery room — church pews face two more screens, headphones allow the audience to listen in on a montage of SABC TV adverts.
“One of the effects of psychedelics is its ability to make you recall or break up certain memories or certain remembrances that have been repressed in certain ways.”
The snippets are iconic early 2000s television — created by visual editor Blk Banana — the film includes the Oros jingle, SABC 1’s commercial of a white man e’khasi, WWE wrestling and Verimark promos.
“In making the work, one of the things I was thinking about was the ways in which memories are sold to us, or packaged in different ways.
“Some of the footage that made its way into this, the Mega Memory [kit] and some of these Verimark ads that sell these kits and your kids would get straight As and their memories would be amazing.
“It was some of the things I was fed, or that my mind was feeding on when I was young and how those memories live in me as an adult years later.”
Speaking to Putuma after the walk-through, she was relieved to have the project up after seven months of preparation.
“I was nervous, but I feel relieved the work is done. I feel like getting the first part of any project up and going is always the hardest part, giving it its first legs makes me feel relieved and excited to explore more and see how much further the project can go.”
On her choice to collaborate with a collective, Putuma said it was an important part of her artistic process.
“Collaboration has become so important in my practice, sometimes I want to [create] but it’s not in my wheelhouse to make those things, and there are people who can make it better.
“It was a natural progression to bring other people in and to ask them to help me think about these ideas.”
The exhibition is open all week and the next walkabout of Imvuselelo at the Monument Gallery is on June 30.
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