Littlegig Littlegig
DECEMBER '23 LIBRARY REVIEWS

CONTEMPORARY ART (DIASPORA)

Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax by Awol Erizku, 2023
R2060 from Jonathan Ball

Born in Ethiopia and raised in the Bronx, Awol Erizku is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and this is his first major monograph. Its black woven cover with a mirrored Nefertiti bust make it an artwork in itself. Erizku works across photography, video, painting, sculpture and installation, building an Afrocentric aesthetic he refers to as “Afro-esotericism”. His conceptual photographs of black cultural icons like Michael B. Jordan and Pharrell appear in the book alongside his still lifes, which are often groups of objects unconventionally placed together to create, in the words of Guggenheim curator Ashley James, ‘unending chains of significance.’ With Fine Arts degrees from the Cooper Union and Yale School of Art, Erizku knows deeply the Eurocentric notions of art that he rejects. SS

CONTEMPORARY FICTION (SOUTH AFRICA)

The Lost Language of the Soul by Mandla Langa, 2021
R330 from The Book Lounge

A cinematic, beautifully rendered record of South Africa’s bloody transition to democracy that wends through the later years of the Struggle, this novel is an utterly engrossing account of the lives of those in the liberation movement – as told through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy on a journey from Zambia to his father’s homeland to find his mother. LM

CONTEMPORARY FICTION (SOUTH AFRICA)

The Lost Language of the Soul by Mandla Langa, 2021
R330 from The Book Lounge

A cinematic, beautifully rendered record of South Africa’s bloody transition to democracy that wends through the later years of the Struggle, this novel is an utterly engrossing account of the lives of those in the liberation movement – as told through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy on a journey from Zambia to his father’s homeland to find his mother. LM

CONTEMPORARY FICTION (ZIMBABWE)

This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangaremba, 2020
R250 from The Book Lounge

I recently re-read Tsitsi Dangaremba’s prescient novel, Nervous Conditions, together with The Book of Not and the cinematic This Mournable Body, the subsequent parts of the trilogy written over 30 years and covering the period from 1968 to 1999 in Zimbabwe. In parallel I had the great privilege of meeting Tsitsi as part of Littlegig Lamu, and found her to be as startlingly precise in person as on the page. Her capacity to both see and reveal the systemic, and to hold the (often unsympathetic) individual clearly in view is instructive of a compassion we all need to cultivate in a world of othering. SR

CONTEMPORARY ART (UGANDA)

Stacey Gillian Abe: Shrub-Let of Old Ayivu by Stacey Gillian Abe, 2023 R1205 from Jonathan Ball

In her paintings, Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe adorns richly painted fabrics with hand-embroidered details – all of which are swathed around her distinctive indigo blue bodies. Whether poised and gazing thoughtfully out at the viewer from the canvas, or abandoned to an enigmatically personal moment, the women in Abe’s work represent both versions of the artist herself, and what she refers to as “the lineage of my ancestors I never got to meet”. The distinctive shade in which they are painted forms an oblique and beautifully rendered reference to the long, often tragic history of the colour indigo itself. Featuring two very readable commentaries on Abe’s work and a dialogue between the artist and writer-curator Catherine McKinley, this book is the perfect introduction to a breathtaking body of work. RA

CONTEMPORARY ART (UGANDA)

Stacey Gillian Abe: Shrub-Let of Old Ayivu by Stacey Gillian Abe, 2023 R1205 from Jonathan Ball

In her paintings, Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe adorns richly painted fabrics with hand-embroidered details – all of which are swathed around her distinctive indigo blue bodies. Whether poised and gazing thoughtfully out at the viewer from the canvas, or abandoned to an enigmatically personal moment, the women in Abe’s work represent both versions of the artist herself, and what she refers to as “the lineage of my ancestors I never got to meet”. The distinctive shade in which they are painted forms an oblique and beautifully rendered reference to the long, often tragic history of the colour indigo itself. Featuring two very readable commentaries on Abe’s work and a dialogue between the artist and writer-curator Catherine McKinley, this book is the perfect introduction to a breathtaking body of work. RA

Our events are small and sell out quickly. Sign up to our mailing list if you don’t want to miss out.

© 2024 Littlegig. Web Team - Scamp Studio