Mashudu Nevhutalu's second exhibition at BKhz Gallery follows his sold-out debut, and deals with this in a deeply personal manner. The title Hayani, meaning 'home' in XiVenda, and uses the artist's mother tongue to eschew the automatic assumptions that come with the term.
"Why home? When I started working with my family photographs, and thinking about archives that my family kept all of these years, one of the things I noticed is that there are a lot of photos with children in them. The thing that I picked up in these photographs (whether at my mother's house, my grandmother's house or my aunt's house) is that all of those places were home. Everyone was a parent to me," says Nevhutalu.
This marks a unique understanding of the term, which typically denotes the physical space one inhabits. For Nevhutalu, home is far more than four brick walls and a roof. It's an expansive notion. Wherever care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust reside, home does too.
