The images that come to mind at the thought of “spring” carry elements of vibrant colours, blooming flowers, warmth, rebirth, and spectacular togetherness — a harmony of nature and people seeking their moments in the sun. These scenes take flight in Simphiwe Ndzube’s iNtwasahlobo (“the spring” in isiXhosa), now showing at Stevenson Gallery in Parktown North, Johannesburg.
Through this assemblage, we are told an enormous story backgrounded by the floral environs we tend to admire about this time. We are greeted by human frames adorned with dynamic fabric and surrendered to the season’s offerings or contemplating its arrangements. The vivid colour schemes in these paintings invite the viewer into a world of visual abundance, to consider the complexities of livelihoods contained within such a space.
The story rendered throughout iNtwasahlobo is considered a succeeding chapter from that reflected in the After Rain Songs showcase that took place between June and July of 2024 at Stevenson’s Amsterdam Gallery. A response to the former Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s idealisation of post-apartheid SA as a “rainbow nation”, the show explored the depths of this term through “a contained set of characters and settings that hold the tensions of a nation contending with freedom”.
Simphiwe Ndzube uses paintings, collages, sculptures, sounds and performances to remember, reimagine, and remark on pieces of history. His speciality is creating environments with traces of our reality and people that exemplify our humanity, but morphing or morphed into allegorical scenes of fantastical worlds inhabited by mythological figures. Rather than dwell on the pertinence and uniformity of historical truths, Ndzube foregrounds stories and figures with an overflowing energy; additionally highlighting both negative and positive aspects of the human condition that trot on an individual existence or among the national collective. iNtwasahlobo is an extension of his “magical-realist” universe with human figurations that are tranquil and surrounded by their homes and gardens.
Omni presently gracing the skies of Ndzube’s scenes are rainbows, which he expresses are what anchors his worldbuilding. The rainbows, which are fitting symbols of spring and summer because of their presence at the emergence of sunlight after rain, further attest to a renewed sense of time that the overall story has ushered us into.
Rainbows can symbolise the hope and promise of a better tomorrow or the good fortune wrapped in a cultural lifetime. In Zanemvula (2025), meaning “bringer of rain” in both isiXhosa and isiNdebele, the rainbow hovers above the head of the woman figure. Turquoise green threads, which also take the shape of the tree and flower stems surrounding her, run from her face to her arms and form a mark at her feet. She is levitating off the ground and entranced, seemingly connecting her corporeal form with the land and her spiritual purpose of this ritual with the heavens.
Their colourful appearance above the world taking place beneath them in the paintings, in somewhat of a symbiosis, marks the long journey and cycle of social change in SA. In other words, they reiterate our need for freedom as much as freedom relies on us to keep upholding it. Additionally, the rainbows hanging onto the houses, mountains and other elements of the space reflect how history will always linger in society regardless of how much of the future there will be and how many springs can be experienced.
The longer you look into the minor details of various elements, their instances reveal that “the setting, however, is no utopia; still holding an element of haunting with figures who keep their eyes closed and lurking shadows in the background.” The story, then, becomes less about what spring has to offer and more about the cultural and spiritual connections people have to nature and abundance, and being confronted with the identities and practices that occupy that world.
Another predominant element across these works is the presence of woman figures adorned in traditional attire: selling fruit, watering flowers, tending to their garden or simply enjoying their environment. Most of them are smoking a traditional wooden tobacco pipe that is typically saved for use at rituals or functions and enjoyed by matriarchs — it is called inqawe. Ndzube likens this inhaling of tobacco to breathing and acknowledges its significance in fostering observation, contemplation, and connection in its intended space.
Xhosa culture has many intricacies related to the style and length of pipe women and men can use, the status of the woman in her community, the kind of gathering that calls for smoking and the etiquette of communal smoking. The practice symbolises amaXhosa's relationships with their ancestors and emphasises their cultural legacies and spiritual beliefs as situated in the broader social/political scheme of their nation.
The different unfolding dynamics create the phantasmic sense of wandering through Ndzube’s homeland. He says, “We’re now in the Eastern Cape, the kasi — I’m looking at those hills. We’re in the garden, in this fruitful blossoming season.”
iNtwasahlobo is showing at Stevenson Gallery in Parktown North, Johannesburg, until March 20.
