Pitika Ntuli

Pitika Ntuli (born February 18, 1942) is a South African sculptor, poet, writer, and academic. Quotes I am an African reborn To reclaim the memories of our forebears As we chart new journeys, New beginnings in our land As we heal the past and renew the future. When Western winds ripped each other apart When white souls thirsty for life were drowned in blood in Belsen and Treblinka trembling In a maelstrom of hate. At the moment of my kiss I was a neighbour to a field of shrapnels Another dawn in Nyanga and Langa Richmond and Mtubatuba In Soweto and Sharpeville in my mother’s womb I was a neighbour to a bullet Now I am reborn Tasting the fruits of freedom in our land I am an African 1998 I am Makeda of Sheba of Axum I am Dahia Al- Kahina who gave Arab Invaders fierce resistance when they sought to Snatch our land 1200 years ago I am Yaa Asantewa I am the spirit medium Nehanda I am Amina conqueror of Kano, Conqueror of Nupe Conqueror of Katsina I am Idia Queen mother, And daughter of Africa I am the spirit of Bondo I seek my path and I find it Yes, I am an African woman. I am an African 1998 Friends, Africans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to protest about Steve Biko’s death but not to praise him. The evil that men do live after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it not be with Biko. The noble Vorster hath told us that Biko was ambitious; If it were so, it was a grievous fault; And grieviously hath Biko answered it. Here under, leave of Vorster and the rest, – For Vorster is an honourable man; So are they all honourable men, Come I to speak at Biko’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Vorster says he was ambitious; And Vorster is an honourable man. When that poor have cried, Biko wept: Ambition must be made of sterner stuff: Yet Vorster says he was ambitious; And Vorster is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Vorster spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, -and not without cause What cause withholds, you, then to mourn O judgement, thou art fled to Verwoerdish beasts, And men have lost their reason!-Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Biko, And I will Not pause until he comes back to me. But yesterday the words of Biko might Have stood against the world: Now lies he there And none so poor to do him reverence. O Africans, if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Vorster wrong and Botha wrong Who you all know, are honourable men. I will not do them wrong; I rather do myself wrong and you wrong Than to wrong such honourable men. O! Pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth; That I am meek and gentle with these butchers, Thou art the ruins of the noblest men That ever lived in the tide Sculpture is a fusion of the artist’s poetry, spirituality and individual expression. David Koloane once wrote, “Although there have been great African sculptors before Pitika, he differs significantly from them all, both because of the broad range of materials he uses and because of his extraordinary ability to be true to each material he chooses to work in.” Beyond the wood, Pitika Ntuli works across a range of materials such as bone, granite, metal and found objects, “ I choose my material depending on what I’m feeling at a particular time and what I want to do,” says Ntuli. He turns to the bone when he wants to evoke a particular spiritual feeling, and he finds that found objects are laden with symbols and takes great pleasure in helping these everyday objects to attain their ideal by freeing them from menial use, “By subjecting an object and using it for what it is not meant to be used stretches people’s imagination. when you look at somebody else’s work you enter into the personality and soul of that person. When I get my new material, I think of the art that I’ve collected and try to find something that I want to do. Pitika Ntuli believes in the omnipotence of art, as evidenced by his work, for him sculpture does not exist without poetry, without music, without painting; it is a celebration of movement, colour, shape and form, saying, “I believe that art is about the interconnectedness, the interrelationship and the interdependency of each and everything.” The impact has been made, and the polymathic artist has carved out a place for himself as one of the greatest South African sculptors of all time. I started as a traditional healer, and that led me to art,” says the sculptor, poet and academic, Pitika Ntuli. He remembers being initiated by his uncle, who asked him to sit before a dead tree until it spoke to him. The tree remained silent until the young Ntuli started to imagine how it would look if it were a human being, “I saw the branches and shouted ‘Viva,’ then my uncle said, ‘it looks like the tree has spoken to you.’” In his meditative state, Ntuli saw figures in the wood – a long time before he became a sculptor. Later, when he was already in exile, he took a hammer and chisel and started to carve a dead piece of wood and brought forth the person his uncle wanted him to see. According to the artist, his healing, spirituality and sculpture all emanate from this moment. The societies and cultures of Africa have long been considered through the sign of closure and immutability, their arts contracted in the rigid space of classification that consigned them to immobility within the confines of a static and mannered otherness. In the gran partage that contrasted the “primitive” and the “civilized”, “cold” societies from “hot”, “closed” societies from “open”, Africa found itself on one side, with Europe on the other” Ladislas Segy I am a South African with a very high profile in both electronics and print media as well as in radio because I tend to be able to speak my mind and the people tend to listen. Also because I have lived my life in different parts of Africa and with different peoples of Africa in their houses. I have lived amongst the Igbos, I have lived amongst the Yorubas. I lived amongst the Hausas and amongst everybody in Nigeria for example without saying anything about places like Tanzania and Swaziland. In all the places that I had lived, I felt at home, I felt understood and I understood what was happening. Now when I return here and find that the people who helped me survive and to fight my enemies come home and are being very treated badly. This xenophobia thing to me is a personal attack against my beliefs, against my sentiments and against my whole feelings. In an interview I think the answer to that one is going to be a yes and a no. We are 53 million people the people who get involved in this xenophobic acts are less than a 100 thousand. Which means to say that there must be somebody or something that is actually pushing them. Yes South Africans are very ignorant when it gets on to the rest of Africa. When I was in Nigeria, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Zambia or even Malawi, I found out that the people there know more about the rest of Africa than South Africans. South Africa because of its very developed and technological savvy nature makes many of its citizens think that South Africa is an extension of the United States of America. When you cross the boarder from the Zambezi, you will see people here saying ‘oh yah you are from Africa!’ because subconsciously, we tend to believe that we are not from Africa. Having said that, we can recall that when the xenophobic attacks came in 2008, it was very fierce However, this time around in 2015 when it happened yet again, it was South Africans themselves who stood in between the people perpetrating these crime and their victims to stop them saying ‘not in our names!. In an interview I do not think we are doing enough, nothing in our curriculum speaks specifically of Africa. The Minister of Arts and culture- Nathi Mthethwa was complaining about the same thing that many South Africans do not even know the flag of the African Union. They don’t even know the anthem of the AU and what it exactly says. Now when we organize these anti-xenophobic activities in partnership with Government and Government departments( the ministries of Defence and that of Arts and culture was with us in our last meeting) we agreed that one of the things we are going to recommend is the subject of Life Orientation which is studies in schools all across South Africa, it should be made compulsory to learn about Africa and also learn about the evils of Xenophobia. The South African Government has so far now, come up with an inter-ministerial committee to look at the issues of Xenophobia and not to react to xenophobia but to find preventive measures to it -which means that the inter-ministerial committee has to link with us in the civil society. In an interview You see in the indigenous society, in the indigenous traditional society of Africans in South Africa, when you come from the outside of a community and you stay in a particular community for a length of time, they will give you a cow and tell you that the cow is for your milk. However, they will include a condition by saying to you that ‘ if the cow gives birth, you will have to give us any of its female calf’. By accepting the cow, you are telling us that you are not in a hurry to go; therefore we will give you a plot of land. We find you a wife if you are a man and if you are a woman, we find you a husband and we will integrate you into the community. It is a practice called ukusisa meaning we give you something in a way to bring you in. That is the traditional natural way of integration in our communities. Now how can we bring back the values around that practice to address the problem we have now? The association we are forming now that will involve us i.e. the people from South Africa and other African peoples from the other parts of Africa will look at how do we get into business together? I am a child of exile. I suckled in the floating clouds and inherited torrential rains from mother Africa. I have traversed the length and the breadth of my land. From Nigeria, to Liberia, from Libya to Namibia, from Mauritania to Ethiopia. All those countries with the ia ia ias of Africa, I have traversed. I am a self-taught artist. However, I studied for my Master of Fine Art degree at the Pratt Institute in New York. Training is great because you work and exchange ideas with a lot of different people and are exposed to a variety of different techniques you would otherwise not be exposed to. Its also helpful to have the feedback from fellow students and lecturers. I work in every medium that I can lay my hands on. I began my sculptural career working with wood, but I have since expanded to work with bone, stone, metal and found objects. The medium is usually determined by the theme I am working on at a specific time. For example, in the current exhibition, bones are critical because of the subject. If I decide to address the matter of the environment as a primary theme, I may use found objects to align with recycling. But increasingly, mixed media appeals to me. I work with mallets and chisels or angle grinders, as well as pneumatic drills, electric drills, and die grinders, depending on the material. Everything in sculpture is complicated. Of course, every art is complicated. A painting is two-dimensional but a sculpture is 365 degrees, and this impacts on the ease or complexity of creating it! When I sculpt, I am interested in the potential of the material, so I never make maquettes. This can be quite demanding, since once I have removed something it cannot be replaced. This method tests my nerves! Art is, to me, a way of self-expression; a tool to help me come to grips with my emotions, ideas, joys and frustrations. Other people go to church to pray. For me, art is my communion with my spirits. It could best be described as worship! I make art to communicate all my existential questions and suggestions for a better world. In other words, art is tool through which I can help other people to gain insight into the world and to think creatively. I started as a traditional healer, and that led me to art. I saw the branches and shouted ‘Viva,’ then my uncle said, ‘it looks like the tree has spoken to you. I choose my material depending on what I’m feeling at a particular time and what I want to do. By subjecting an object and using it for what it is not meant to be used stretches people’s imagination. Both of these use deeper images that carry symbolism. My poetry is layered and can be interpreted in many ways, which is what I did in my old sculptures, too. The poetic elements in sculpture are particularly important to me. When you look at somebody else’s work you enter into the personality and soul of that person. When I get my new material, I think of the art that I’ve collected and try to find something that I want to do. You go into an art gallery and see a lot of laziness – work that doesn’t seem to express anything spiritual, political or social. When you see art as it happens in South Africa, it is kind of shallow and just an idea to shock rather than to leave traces of meaning that people can take with them. I needed to make an impact, not only in South Africa but also to myself, to take stock of who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve achieved and what I still dreamed I could. I believe that art is about the interconnectedness, the interrelationship and the interdependency of each and everything. 13 No one notices who you are, you leave no footprints. You are wanted and unwanted, always in between, feeling you are losing your identity. I go to museums and galleries but nothing hits me in my stomach. I didn't particularly want to be discovered as an artist. Working with stone requires you to become a geologist. There are so many aspects to it - an artist is not just a dreamer. It's the biggest poetry thing in western Europe. Pitika Ntuli, poet and sculptor(17 February 2011) “I do not copy nor work like nature. I work with nature! Bones are vital, as in imbued with life, and it is this life that they possess that possesses me when I work. We are partners We are partners. Bones, like wood, have definite forms to work with. I do not oppose their internal and external directions, I externalise their inherent shapes to capture the beauty and the truth embedded in them, in other words, I empower the bones to attain their own ideal. Pitika Ntuli’s’ latest exhibition ‘Azibuyele Emasisweni’ celebrates African heritage External links Category:Sculptors Category:Artists from South Africa Category:Poets from South Africa Category:Academics from South Africa Category:1942 births Category:Living people