It is this conversation that Makhafula Vilakazi invites us to in this year’s solo show titled Concerning Blacks. Perhaps even more than just a show, he invites us to a moment of self-reflection, where we are left with no choice but to confront ourselves and what we have become. In his work, Makhafula minces no words, pops open the rotten wound caused by ‘post’-apartheid deception.

But let’s be blunt, for most of us liberation has become synonymous with the neatly trimmed lawns of Sandton, desires of walking the dog on the clean pavements of Bryanston all the while speaking English from the nasal. That is the kind of freedom we imagine, not the turning upside down of history.

But I have seen it, glimpses of it. His images are a critical commentary on black youth culture and the church as an important aspect of black life. They are a close look at the ‘quotidian’ and the mundane of city/township life as an anecdote we can use to think about our condition.

Future Nostalgia is an interrogation of the deep entanglement between the past and the presence. It is a project that seems to reflect the symbology of the Sankofa bird which is a mythical bird that flies forward while looking backwards.