Artist wants Zuma painting on display

2012-08-28 22:42

Artist Ayanda Mabulu defends his 'Umshini Wam' painting. (Dan Calderwood, News24)

Lauren Hess, News24

Cape Town - Artist Ayanda Mabulu said if media publications don’t show his entire painting of President Jacob Zuma, he will put pictures of it all over Cape Town.

The painting, Umshini Wam [Weapon of Mass Destruction], is part of an exhibition titled Our Fathers at the AVA Gallery.

It shows Zuma in traditional Zulu attire with his genitals exposed.

Mabulu said if publications did what was done to Brett Murray’s The Spear painting to his Umshini Wam painting, and blurred the genitals, they would be “hiding the beast”.

Standing in front of the painting at the gallery, the artist explained his disappointment with the current crop of leaders and how the painting came to represent that.

“I don’t want to see these black skin colonialists wearing tuxedos and tight pants... eating sushi every day whereas our people dressed in rags... A family of 15 living in a one-roomed house, sharing a toilet with a kitchen.”

In a media statement for the exhibition, Mabulu said: “I respect the ANC liberation elders, like Oliver Tambo and John Langalibalele Dube. They worked for the interests of the people. This ANC is filled with greed and the lust of capitalism. It drives a colonial dialogue. The ANC that you represent is the master manipulator, the weapon of destruction.”

The painting has received widespread media coverage, particularly in light of The Spear but the exhibition’s Chantelle Louw and Kirsty Cockerill pointed out that there were far more controversial pieces on display.

There were six other paintings that included depictions of penises.

“Many of the works [in the exhibition] are way more controversial than [Mabulu’s Umshini Wam],” Cockerill said.

One of those pieces is another painting by Mabulu called Black Venus that depicts a breast becoming a penis.

Listen to Mabulu speak to journalists at the AVA gallery in Cape Town:



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