THOZAMA AND ROSE / CHRISTIANE LANGE IN CONVERSATION WITH TANYA POOLE
Why did you choose to use ink for this body of work?Watching Thozama and Rose is quite emotional. One of the things you have to learn in
the whole process of training towards a black-belt is to control your emotions. A good
fighter is someone who is able to control their anger, aggression or fear. However, karate
is also full of unexpected moments where you can’t anticipate what is going to happen in
a fight. In this way, it’s similar to working with ink as there’s both an element of control
as well as a lack of it. Colouristically, the ink restrains the heat of the fight or of emotion.There’s quite an oppositional binary here; a black woman, a white woman, one
slightly younger, one slightly older, and yet they are also two fighters fighting
each other.I want the viewer to initially experience it like this. Yet as one walks through the video
installation of Thozama and Rose one can see all the gradients and shifts between those
two binaries. On the surface you see the differences between these two women, but the
ink establishes a kind of commonality as well.Christiane Lange is an art historian and collector, based in Germany.‘Thozama and Rose’ runs from September 30th–December 2nd, 2015 at Galerie m Bochum,
in Germany.3/3 ARTAFRICAThozama and Rose Exhibition view, © Photo by Katharina Zimmermann. All images courtesy of Galerie m Bochum, Germany.