Tell It to the Mountains
Exhibition 21 October 2021–20 January 2022
Installation photograph from the ‘Tell it to the Mountains’ exhibition in A4’s Gallery. On the left, Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s paper and photo collage ‘Mthimkhulu II’ is pasted onto the wall. In the middle, Sobekwa’s photographs ‘Bhayi alembathwa lembathwa ngabalaziyo’ and ‘Veldfire’ are mounted on the wall.
Installation view: Tell It to the Mountains by Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Mikhael Subotzky, October 21, 2021–January 20, 2022. Image courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation.
Title Tell It to the Mountains Dates 21 October 2021–20 January 2022 Location Gallery Tagline Tell It to the Mountains is an exhibition by Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Mikhael Subotzky in A4’s gallery. Credits

Artists:
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Mikhael Subotzky

Musical composition and performance:
Nduduzo Makhathini

Tell It to the Mountains in A4’s gallery emerged from a gesture of return. Throughout Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s residency at A4 last year, he reassembled his photographic practice out of sequence and time, building a horizon line onto the foundation’s walls. The exhibition’s title reimagines that of James Baldwin’s 1953 novel – Go Tell It on the Mountain – and the African-American spiritual of the same name. “Go back to where you started,” Baldwin writes, “or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it.” 

The hub of the exhibition is a large tree. Titled Mthimkhulu II, this autobiographical installation by Lindokuhle references the ilhathi lesiXhosa, those remaining thickets of forest that are sacred to the amaXhosa and can be found in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Extending the thematics this tree proposes, Mikhael Subotzky’s four-channel video installation Moses and Griffiths (2012) offers a filmic portrait of Moses Lamani and Griffiths Sokuyeka that asks after the distance between ‘home’ in Tantyi, a township outside Makhanda (then known as Grahamstown), and ‘work’ in the city’s colonial structures. This in turn offers reflections on distance – between the promises of reformation and its realities in practice – between the fictional stories that are told of history and those of lived experience. Khanya Mashabela speaks of “two Moses and two Griffiths,” who “cannot be reconciled or easily separated. The ‘ideal’ version of their identities, as demanded by the institutional structures in which they work, is hostile to their core identities outside of their labour.”

Tell It to the Mountains, writes Sean O’Toole, is “rooted in friendship and a shared enquiry into the meaning of home and belonging.” Mikhael and Lindokuhle’s affinity is one of friends as well as colleagues. Here, Mikhael becomes an interlocutor and conversation partner to the installation of Lindokuhle’s photographic series Ezilalini (The country) (2018 – ongoing). The series traces Lindokuhle’s return to his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape, where his generational family resides and the inzinyana (ancestors) can be felt. The countryside, with its areas of trees and forest, is of particular importance to facilitate these connections. Lindokuhle recalls a story about the inzinyana; that they have forsaken the cities – of Johannesburg and the area of Thokoza where he grew up – because the children of the Eastern Cape arrive there to become lost, never to return. The disappearance of his sister Ziyanda is explored in I carry Her photo with Me (2017–ongoing), which is staged in Tell It to the Mountains as a slideshow with a musical score by Nduduzo Makhathini.

Lindokuhle’s desire to talk through his practice in his mother tongue during his residency led to a series of conversations between the photographer and Thembinkosi Goniwe, which is accessible as audio in the gallery. In the words of Lucienne Bestall: “In Tell It to the Mountains, both Sobekwa and Subotzky look backwards that they might retrieve the past from forgetfulness; might give to it a material home.” That material is of the tangible as well as the metaphysical, of spirit and bone.

Postponed by a fire that damaged A4’s Gallery in December 2020, Tell It to the Mountains also marks A4’s reopening to publics after renovations.

Find your way around the exhibition.
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Photograph of the wayfinder publication for Tell it to the Mountains exhibition by Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Mikhael Subotzky in A4 Arts Foundation's Gallery.

"The minority knows a whole lot about the majority, but the majority does not know about the minority with any degree of intimacy."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"English has a pretence of being a transparent language – rather, it is white."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"He saw himself as a rock that belonged to a particular territory, while everything around him was swirling; in motion."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"To be a minority within a minority becomes a visual practice."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"Building an archive is a political statement. One considers how smart it was – and effective – of political entities: to put effort into building archives as a huge part of rebuilding the nation."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"State archives and institutional archives are based on location. Ours is based on diaspora."
– Dor Guez

At the second Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioner Dor Guez engages the A4 team in thinking through the exhibition, touching on themes of displacement and exile, belonging and memory.

"The family is our first landscape – with its dynamics, its story of itself."
– Federica Angelucci

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"Continuity, then fragmentation; continuity, then fragmentation."
– Federica Angelucci

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"Can you ever see beyond what you don’t already know? What brings you outside of yourself? A rupture, a disruption."
– Federica Angelucci

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"The negative space makes one wonder, what is in the gap?"
– Federica Angelucci

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"Give up the notion of home. ‘Home’ is not going to contain your project. What contains your project is a notion of ‘going’."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"We may think of ‘home’ as the place where we bury our people rather than as a geographic setting."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"Here, the practitioner is going, not to find a mirror – but going in order to live."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"We live inside of a discourse that forces us to seek a fixed place."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"Once you go from home – from what you have always known – your sense of memory becomes impossible to contain."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"In South Africa, you know that walking about is the only real education."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"So often in the South African photographic tradition, the project is one of going – there is a tendency to go, to follow."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"A way to talk of 'home': the place where people are resting."
– George Mahashe

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"I'm interested in this situation where the pictures come together, where these essays and photographs are combining yet can also be separated."
– Josh Ginsburg

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"The words we use are bounded. The language confuses the concept."
– Josh Ginsburg

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"The question of the horizon as a point one can never reach aligns with this idea of ‘home’: we never arrive, we are never home."
– Josh Ginsburg

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"Poetry can be open to dishonesty."
– Khanya Mashabela

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"What's interesting to me about photography, social and documentary photography in particular, is how it functions in its obligations to its subjects and audience.
– Khanya Mashabela

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"I’ve learnt about myself in relation to the landscape."
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"I wanted to understand where I came from to understand where I was going."
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"What home? My mother asked. You are umFengu, a refugee, descended from those people displaced during the war of Mfecane in the 1800s."
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"Umngqameko speaks of the far distance, looking towards that which can never be reached."
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"Photographs are like infidels."
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"You talk about the horizon being impossible to reach. In my language, Umngqameko is something you can touch. You can grab the distance." 
– Lindokuhle Sobekwa

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"I’m reluctant to claim catharsis for myself or anyone – that a work can make something ‘come unstuck’."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"What is the inverse of ‘going?’"
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"A risk in this tradition of ‘going’ in photography, is an outward-looking focus that disallows interiority."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"I'm often very reluctant to make the conversation about photography." 
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"‘Studio’ is a place to stay, and still be in the stories."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"I’m curious to disentangle the idea of home in its translations, and to think particularly of its mechanism as a colonial construct, most evidently in the word ‘homeland’, which was so deliberately one of dispossession."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the first Live Harvest for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners George Mahashe and Federica Angelucci engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"The surface of the wall becomes another dimension of photography or image-making: space, time, and then texture."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"In some ways, it feels like I'm the last of a certain kind of breed of photographer – and that Lindo perhaps is the first of another kind."
– Mikhael Subotzky

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition. 

"I'm wondering more about the idea of betrayal, which seems implicit in photography."
– Sean O’Toole

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"I've realised over time how important lineages and chronologies are in relationships, and in how photographers understand what they do."
– Sean O’Toole

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"When you talk about explaining a show to someone as a curator, or instead, when you ask them “What do you think?” we grapple with the potential of the audience. The potential of the audience is the realm of the work, where there is generosity from the artist as well as all participants; an openness to being touched."
– Sumayya Vally

Invited practitioner Sumayya Vally joins the artists and A4 team as a critical friend in reflecting on Tell It to the Mountains.

"Curators change the work when putting it into conversation with other work and through arranging the work. To what extent does the work change the curator, change you?"
– Sumayya Vally

Invited practitioner Sumayya Vally joins the artists and A4 team as a critical friend in reflecting on Tell It to the Mountains.

"There is a difference in meaning between what it is to touch something, and what it means to be touched by something; where the atmosphere is part of us, rather than apart from us, or separate."
– Sumayya Vally

Invited practitioner Sumayya Vally joins the artists and A4 team as a critical friend in reflecting on Tell It to the Mountains.

"I wonder if there are parallel practices that can be developed as institutional codes – as ways of being – so that whatever comes out of the artistic practice can also offer itself into the realm of the institution and enter the discipline, without feeling extractive."
– Sumayya Vally

Invited practitioner Sumayya Vally joins the artists and A4 team as a critical friend in reflecting on Tell It to the Mountains.

"What is it that is at play other than that which I know or I see?"
– Thembinkosi Goniwe

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

"What happens when you suspend this name or designation ‘photography' and we think instead of the economy of the image?"
– Thembinkosi Goniwe

At the roundtable discussion for Tell It to the Mountains, invited practitioners Thembinkosi Goniwe, Khanya Mashabela, and Sean O'Toole engage with the artists and A4 team in thinking through the exhibition.

Process, Tell it to the Mountains, Lindokuhle Sobekwa & Mikhael Subotzky, A4 Arts Foundation, October 21, 2021–January 20, 2022.
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