The Hands That Feed You: Ubucwebe is an outdoor installation at the Goethe-Institute Johannesburg that acknowledges and uses the established aesthetics associated with parallel economy. It foregrounds Johannesburg, the city of gold, as a place of promise and a site where dreams defer. The installation also brings materials into the fold that are indicators of migration and global dependency strategies. It visualises how aid becomes trade and illustrates that non-formal trade, although accounting for a big portion of trade on the African continent, remains marginalised and largely neglected.
The Hands That Feed You, on its own terms, attempts to make a case for this trade.
Ubucwebe is an isiZulu term for glitter or plated gold, a product that was so central for the creation of Johannesburg.
Virtual opening of the exhibition: 6 May 2021. Curator and artist Russel Hlongwane will take over our Instagram channel on that day. Watch out for exhibition images, video snippets and background stories and join him on a virtual walk-about here:
www.instagram.com/goethejoburg
The installation is the last part of the project
The Hands That Feed You, comprising a digital exhibition, a series of essays and two audio mixes (available here: https://www.goethe.de/ins/za/en/kul/sup/hfy.html). It is conceived by thirdspace, a collective consisting of João Roxo (Maputo) and Russel Hlongwane (Durban).
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