A new book LA RUMBA on Thonton Kabeya paints the artist’s personal and artistic journey –a collector’s item
CITYLIFE/ARTS in this edition reviews LA RUMBA
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
At the opening of Congolese born Johannesburg based artist Thonton Kabeya’s debut exhibition with Everard Read Gallery, titled PASADA last year, two ladies, friends who during the opening had befriended me, revealed one of the reasons they attended the opening.
“He promised that he was going to dance the Rumba style, but so far he has not done so. We wonder If he is ever going to do so today. Do you know?”
Soon after Kabeya was on the dance floor and a few ladies joined him, transforming the gallery into some sort of a vibrant dance hall that blended well with the art works on the walls. Mainly of dancing couples in an intimate dance embrace, dancing the Rumba style, a dance form that originated in that country, but has since spread to other parts of the world in one form or another. Most of it is due to the painful issue of slavery that saw Africans, including Congolese forcibly taken to overseas countries to work for capitalists there.
Today If one went to Cuba and you happen to be in a club, the chances are that you would witness the influence of Rumba on the contemporary dance style in that country. In essence, the Rumba theme dominates Kabeya’s current art practice after initially focusing on painting children’s faces using a Kabeya created technique called canvas sculpting. IN fact during that phase of his life, the portraits that the artists painted always wore sad faces.
There is a reason for that. The civil conflict in the DRC imposed itself on the then emerging artist’s art practice. “We did not go out during this time, no school, no food, the same friends you used to play with now looked at you as If you were an enemy, or as If they had never seen you before and they started calling Bilulu (cockroaches in Swahili).
IN some instances we could see our neighbours through our windows having meetings about how to kill us and discuss who will take ownership of our house and the people from Kasai (the South Eastern region where his family hails from),” writes Kabeya in his new book LA RUMBA about his life journey and art practice. With photographs of his work, essays and poems, this book is partly art practice and partly biographical.
“Along with the move to South Africa came a shifting of the predominant theme and subject of children’s portraiture that Kabeya was known for in the DRC. Due to Kabeya’s eagerness to constantly maintain artistic authenticity, he sought to find a means to not add to the ever increasing realm of child based portraiture. Not wanting to add to the names of established artists who had made this subject into a branded career.” The book published by the artist titled of course, LA RUMBA, in reference to the theme that dominates his current art practice states.
LA RUMBA is in fact a comprehensive book that not only sketches the artistic and personal journey of this prolific artist, giving readers a broader understanding of where his current art practice comes from, but carries several photographs of his body of work in his career so far. LA RUMBA gives the reader a fully-blown view of Kabeya as a person and as an artist. The two cannot be separated. It is clear that a lot of thinking and writing went into this book. In fact reading through it, one gets to understand the artist journey in Kabeya and Kabeya the person in his art.
The two personalities are both meticulously represented in LA RUMBA. This coffee table special edition is essential to collect for current Kabeya collectors, to add to their art collections, as well as future collectors of his works. It will add value to the collection as you will get to understand the creator of the work’s personal journey.
You will read several stories in the book as well as viewing an extensive body of the art works he has created so far in his career and the inspiration or story behind some of the art works contained in LA RUMBA.
To order the book go to www.1edition.co.za