Unathi Mkonto.
Unathi Mkonto.
Image: Johno Mellish

The all-to-familiar “To Let” signs are indicative of the fallout from an economic downturn and the fluidity of our ever-evolving cities. “Walking around the city, to-let signs are part of the visual language of the street, the corner, building facades, empty spaces, rims of buildings, the emptiness,” says architect-artist Unathi Mkonto who recently took up his residency, titled “To Let” at the Zeitz Mocaa Atelier.

Like his temporarily occupation of this experimental studio, the vacated spaces, “non-space”, the gaps in between and those at the city edge, are open to reinterpretation, possibly beyond original intended purposes, full of potential for new occupants and meaning. A young flâneur, Mkonto traverses these realms-in-flux with unassuming dexterity, mapping his observations — what he calls “conversations” — first through contemplative calligraphic-like lines or “scribbles” on paper, and then sculpture.

“The mark-making is my language, my cursive handwriting with its own ‘font’,” explains Mkonto of his drawings as he transcribes his experience through energetic abstract loops and downstrokes, some made under the control of architectural rule, other lines with more “punk” gay abandon at the hand of the artist. A gentle tailing off of a curve is maybe the end of a thought or sentence but certainly not the end of the conversation.

As the continent of Africa urbanises at a rate higher than any population growth in human history, it is important for us to engage in conversations about how we co-inhabit our cities. Anticipating our future, how do we reshape and reclaim our spaces in order for them to be more evolved and inclusive, and not just informed by planning bureaucracy, service infrastructure and architecture? In a more interdisciplinary approach to Lesley Loko’s “Lab of the Future” curated for the Venice Architectural Biennale in 2023, this is where the artist has more flexibility, freedom and the palette to offer immediacy to deeper social commentary in dealing with the complexities and nuances of the city.

While Mkonto does not claim to be making confrontational statements or solving the urban challenge, his conversations do offer us a different lens. “Where architecture and planning can provide new solutions, they are often superimposed quick fixes to immediate problems that fail to address the greater complexities of urban life.” Much like Mkonto, whose interpretive practice is to fully immerses himself as observer, taking cues from public space and the “spaces between people” who inhabit it, the artist plays an important role as visual commentator without imposition.

Field Lines 2022 UNATHI.
Field Lines 2022 UNATHI.
Image: Supplied
Field Lines, 2022 soft pastel on canson UNATHI.
Field Lines, 2022 soft pastel on canson UNATHI.
Image: Supplied
Image: Supplied

“I make abstract art about real life and what’s around me. How I commute through the city. How everyone engages with the city space. While I have an awareness of the history of the land and infrastructure, I wouldn’t say I’m resolving any problems, but I’m part of the experience. I’m watching and creating with them, the people, often from different countries and cultures but interpreting this in my own way.

“There is an urgency to architecture whereas my work has more of a timelessness that’s not based on a newness of today. I’m looking at the emotion, how people are feeling, what’s provoking them, why they are doing certain things. I then take that information and interpret it, first as a drawing then as a sculpture. I think architects and artists have different responsibilities ... I wouldn’t say I’m solving or trying to solve the same problems that architect are. It’s more about the co-preservation of everyone’s experience.” 

Unathi's installation taking shape at the residency.
Unathi's installation taking shape at the residency.
Image: Gary Cotterell
Shelves filled with material supplies for Unathi's installation at Zeitz.
Shelves filled with material supplies for Unathi's installation at Zeitz.
Image: Gary Cotterell

Displaying acute spatial awareness from early childhood, Peddie-born Mkonto started sketching houses in his formative years in the Eastern Cape; however, he found a “good balance between science and the flow of creativity” through his formal training as an architect and then as an artist. Defining their space and identity, “each family [in the village] makes their own house and the functions of the rooms are fitting to that family’s needs. Even the colours of the paint used on the walls are individual. My mother used to recycle the contents of those big EverReady [Radio “A”] batteries, turning white paint into her own beautiful grey. So our home always had a band of white and grey,” Mkonto recalls. “I think this influenced my sense of minimalism and abstraction.”   

Image: Gary Cotterell

While he engages in temporary place-making in the Atelier, these are not just fleeting gestures as his sentences become human-scale “architectural collages”, taking shape through the use of “relatable materials” such as plywood, cardboard sheets and tubes, velcro, carpet squares. “I wanted to take my drawings and make them three-dimensional so that people could inhabit them,” he explains, “and through materials, objects, colour and texture I take space and reinterpret it through my own language. While there is an aspect of the work being about non-space, it also takes up space in the room. The work becomes an actor or character that is interpreting or mimicking something or the feeling of the room.” 

His choice of materials plays an important role in an open conversation, each relevant to the forms he wants to create but Mkonto says he is also open and “truthful to the character of a material” and is “guided by what a material wants to communicate, how it wants to be used”.

“There is shape or expression in a material. Something like cardboard is also the ‘way in’ to a work as it is familiar to everyone but adds value in the moment by how I present it. It might be fragile but has strength through the emotional connection.”  

Unathi Mkonto’s “To LeT” runs until February 25 2024.

© Wanted 2024 - If you would like to reproduce this article please email us.
X