‘Umlindelo’ captures the
A rectangular piece of cobalt blue fabric graces the entrance. On it, straight white lines form a star — the fabric introduces us to the work. Singing is heard — a church service, worship.
Sabelo Mlangeni pushes against the spectacular with his solo exhibition, Umlindelo wa Makholwa (The Night Vigil of the Believers) at the Wits Arts Museum. This photographic series is a lyrical essay about two Zionist churches in Southern Africa, with a particular focus on Johannesburg and Driefontein.
Umlindelo wa Makholwa, a collaboration with independent curator Kabelo Malatsie and Cambridge University lecturer Dr Joel Cabrita, whose research is on the history of Christianity in Southern Africa, is not a series of images about religion, although it is born of religion. The body of work, shot from 1997 to this year, contains more than 50 photographs and a video installation, each suggesting more than it reveals, and each with a language of its own.
Born and raised in Driefontein in Mpumalanga, Mlangeni graduated from the Market Photo Workshop (founded by David Goldblatt who died recently) in 2004. Mlangeni’s career has seen him realising solo projects and group exhibitions, including Kholwa: The Longing of Belonging, which showed at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology in Cambridge last year.
Umlindelo wa Makholwa is a reincarnation of this exhibition, with Mlangeni again collaborating with Cabrita. The photographer’s other notable exhibitions