The black story in Stephen Langa’s details

The memories of your childhood are probably filled with intricate and intimate details. Your mother’s back as she sat with a cup of tea after her day’s work, your grandmother's cat walking past your feet, your uncle’s favourite hat, his brand of whisky and beer, those big brown leather suitcases stashed in the corner of a bedroom, a square tray, lit candles, and gathering places dominated by jazz and laughter. These are the scenes and details represented in Stephen Langa’s Inceptions of Black Serenity, currently showing at the David Krut Projects’ Blue House Gallery.

The exhibition comprises still-life monotypes and pastel drawings well-intentioned to spark curiosity and reverence, within the viewer, for black life in SA. Langa’s reference of photographs and portraits from his collection invokes the viewer’s involvement in each portrayed moment, object, scene, and figure. This enhances the experience of the artworks, the portrayals of which are brought to life in his congenial visual language.

The appeal of these portrayals is further layered when considering that he draws inspiration from his real life and the people around him. His art practice traces the social and cultural tapestries of his small hometown, Mokopane, in Limpopo and his lived city of Johannesburg, in Gauteng. He places value on the normalcy and intimacy of black lives, consistently painting black figures in moments of respite.

Langa tells the story of blackness and belonging to black culture. Additionally, he invites the viewer to the idea that these figures, in their spaces and surrounded by their people and belongings, are still individuals in their own right. When you walk through the gallery, you can become intrigued by the collective black consciousness and the visual rhythms of its sequences. You are mesmerised by the shared fashion styles, ways of decor, lively gatherings, and heartwarming moments. Yet, you are also met with the idea that the figures have hidden lives, which may be followed by a curiosity to know who each figure is and what their story is.

Mapantsula (2024) depicts two beer bottles and a black Panama-style hat on the floor by the feet of three men who are sitting together. They are styled in black formal pants with colourful socks and black and brown leather dress shoes, respectively. Known for this distinct put-together fashion sense, the pantsula way of life also involves intricate footwork dances and expressive hand gestures, and it has been cemented across SA as a signifier of black culture. The figures in this artwork do not simply represent mapantsula as these prominent members of society; they also resemble the people we know or have seen before, so you can almost put a face and name to them, and you can appreciate the humans behind them. 

A Mile in Love’s Shoes (2024), which depicts the foot of a man sitting across a woman whose two feet appear wearing black and white heels, adds a layer of gender dynamics to Langa’s presentation of black life. The captured scene is intimate because it is portrayed from the two figures’ point of view, thus casting a light on the connections and array of emotions that can exist in those gender dynamics. A reference to the “walking a mile in their shoes” idiom for the title acts as one of the nudges upon the viewer’s deep consideration of black tranquillity, togetherness and romance.

Langa’s imagery reflects stillness. He shifts the audience away from their fixed associations, in most instances, of the black experience with scenes such as the overflowing and volatile streets of Johannesburg city as well as the labour and hardships of black people. Those scenes are very much real but they are a segment of the entire multifaceted black story.

We get moments, such as of a black man who stands of his own volition in The King of the Crucible (2024) leaning against the wall and resting his head, his face covered in a brown hat. The tone of the artwork becomes a reminder that the man is not meant to be judged by the social and political stratosphere that surrounds him, but understood by the metallurgical conditions that refine him as a growing person.

We also get a moment from a black woman who is concerned with her own drama in A Mirror That Doesn’t Reflect My Past (2024), which depicts a woman in a red jacket looking at a version of herself dressed in a white dress and walking through an open door in the mirror. The story told in this scene reflects a woman refusing to be held down by external forces imbued with the image of her, but rather focusing on who she can become in herself and within her world.

Langa contributes to the black art movement through the details in this body of work, spotlighting its power and purpose of reclaiming black narratives and representing their aesthetics in a seemingly genuine way.

• Inceptions of Black Serenity runs until September 3 at the David Krut Projects’ Blue House Gallery, 151 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg.