We meet the artist at Victoria Yards to discuss the power and spirituality behind his paintings

Kerri von Geusau: What originally brought you to Victoria Yards?
Ayanda Mabulu: I came at a time when I was attacked for my work titled ‘Economy Rape’ depicting Nelson Mandela being raped by Jacob Zuma. At the time, I just had a gun point incident at my previous studio at Bag Factory by two guys sent by the ruling party to shoot me. My car was beaten by stones and tyres burst with a note on the windscreen saying ‘If you don't stop we will fuck you up’.

Brian Green [Victoria Yards founder] was so kind as to offer me a studio at Victoria Yards as it was slowly opening. Since then it has become my artistic place of refuge. It’s become a very inspiring and highly energetic space for creatives… It’s private yet open to the public - more of a 'green space' where us creative cows can graze peacefully.

KVG: What are you working on at the moment?
AM: My Healers series - celebrating the lives of Black woman in our society and in the world at large, economically and in nurturing our society and making sure that the world is a better place to live in. I want to acknowledge their role economically, in the office, culturally, politically, in war and as Matriarchs and beyond. The series is speaking from a Son's and a Father-Husband and a Brother point of view.

I’m also working on my play, a theatre piece about the slaughter of the Mineworkers and the de-humanisation the Black mineworker working class under a degrading situation where violence becomes a solution anytime when they cry for a raise of the minimum wage. It's a musical called, for now, Did They Dance?

KVG How have you managed to adjust your work during lockdown?
AM: Sometimes work doesn't only mean paint. I do mostly research-based work and so am doing more writing and conceptualising too.

KVG: In what way has your background shaped your work?
AM: You’re just a floating astronaut when you have no base and don't recognise where you come from. You are like a tree without roots if you are too ignorant to not be impacted by your cultural background. As an African, and a world citizen, it is your background that becomes the base of your work, that can inspire change and have impact on other people. Culture and traditions, human 360 mind revolution and creative voice, and not to forget the most important part of it - spirituality.

I’m a spiritual vessel, and for the world to heal, we all have to share this gift either creatively or through other forms because now more than ever, the world needs healing. I am trying to inspire that change by borrowing from the past - the folklore storytelling - and finding a way to transport it to now as we go to the future.

KVG: What methods of inquiry do you use to delve into your subject matter?
AM: I dream dreams and believe. Some of us are the foreseers. Spirituality and belief make it easy to navigate your way into the unknown and harvest what will fuel to the future. You become one with your subject matter because to create what has life, you must breathe life into it too. There is some form of dying, a ritualistic creative death where, in your work, you reincarnate… that’s beautiful.

KVG: Do you have a particular method of portraying your understanding of the world?
AM: I suggest and the world decides either to consume or to reject. I'm just a spiritual silver surfer and a spiritual vessel, a creative oasis, and if you thirst, come and quench your thirst. That’s it.

KVG: Have you always been an artist?
AM: Artists like Kings, are born not made, I was born ready and an artist. Artist and Kings are born, things are made.

KVG: What does art-making in Johannesburg mean to you in the present?
AM: Johannesburg is just turf small but it matters, but the world is my platform.

Creating in Johannesburg is like being in the eye of the storm. It has been a desert for our people. It keeps taking and taking with no hope for life. It has consumed most of our people as they are trapped and end up being victims of cheap labour. It has been a glimpse of home yet a falsified illusion that keeps taking and taking with no giving back. I wanted to see what is it with this mining town and I found out that it isn't the city but the people. It’s like observing war and the turning and a slaughter of the innocent, I do what I can.

KVG: Can you share a bit more about the political landscape of your work?
AM: I'm not a politician. Politicians are deceitful vultures and birds of prey. They are chameleons and snakes. Being Black is political - that's an inescapable truth. The economics are political, the geographical inhabitation of our people is political. Being an artist is political too. All I do is to talk and share my view and challenge and speak. Times for art that questions is great. When you know the answers, what do you do? You speak the truth without prolonging the remedy, whilst the poor and the needy are becoming a statistic in the hands of the greedy.

KVG: What is the role of the military props in your shows?
AM: To say we are not blind, we know who the enemy is and we are not fools. We even know the corrupt hiding behind the military props, flags and guns, bombs and military grotesque faces and ugly voices, we know. I condemn those and I say to the brewers of the neo-economical apartheid and neo-slavery: we know them too. What I do is to say, remember, memory is a weapon. Let there be no repeat of the past atrocities. What's the use of art if it can do that? Just a beautiful, empty ornament, like a stinking dead flesh hanging on your wall with an expensive price - that’s like biltong.

KVG: What does the gallery world represent to you as an independent artist?
AM: Gallery is like theatre: I believe you should dance and perform as you want. It’s a stage. Imagine if now you are being controlled in terms of what to do. Imagine an uncreative being sitting on the other side of the table, employed with some sophisticated job title, telling you what should be consumed by the masses. They want to control the narrative and dictate what should be seen. They rob people of their money to sell them décor.

It's like a boxing ring. Artists are champions, when must they fight their bouts? Okay then, can a gallery exist without an artist? No! We don't create to be poor - that would be a trap - but we need not be cultural prostitutes. There are cultural vultures and spiritual hyenas out there slowing us and making us stagnant. In that case, the gallery becomes a never-ending abyss for a progressive artist.