Dear friends,
This third Fortnightly Highlights is dedicated to The Showroom Mural commission: Notes to Self (Intimate 1) by Simnikiwe Buhlungu. While The Showroom's doors continue to be closed, Buhlungu's mural remains on our emblematic facade, albeit visible only to those in the neighbourhood with a view from their windows or passing by on the street.
Below we share a collection of materials selected by Simnikiwe in conversation with The Showroom team, in particular from the Communal Knowledge archive, as an opportunity to open up aspects of the research behind the commission whilst enabling the work to continue to have a presence and resonance online; translated and extended into digital space.
New audio recordings from the call-and-response sonic engagement conceived by Simnikiwe as an integral aspect of the project in which passers by have recorded their 'notes to self' via a tape recorder embedded in The Showroom's facade have been transferred from analogue tape to digital audio file, edited by Simnikiwe and uploaded to the website. The first of these audio fragments are now available to listen in The Library.
Additionally, and available online for the duration that the commission remains on the facade, Simnikiwe shares her research recording, Mixtapenyana (Side C) ; a sonic precursor to the mural commission recorded during her residency at Wysing Arts Centre in the summer of 2019, as part of the Future Assembly residency between London, Cambridge, and Lagos, Nigeria alongside Wysing’s Artist-in-Residence Exchange.
Take care,
Lily Hall
Assistant Curator, The Showroom
and
Simnikiwe Buhlungu
Artist
Image: Simnikiwe Buhlungu, The Showroom Mural Commission: Notes to Self (Intimate 1), 2019. Photo: Max Colson
Image: Fiery pool of Asphalt, 2019. Courtesy of Alberto Duman
Image: Chimurenga, The Chimurenga Library, 2015. Courtesy of The Showroom
