I V U K U V U K U
WATER THEMED PROCESSES
This innovative approach embodies a process of learning, unlearning, and relearning about selves through site-based, community engagement, storytelling, materiality, ritual, and memory. It underscores the significance of home, cultural resistance, and daily experiences that inform an intuitive understanding of how space and time influence or affect narratives. This body of work emphasizes the connections between natural elements, sounds, body, performance, installation, both within private and public communities and beyond the site itself.
Umnikelo/The Offfering
Umnikelo yimbo yam
Umnikelo yimbo yekhaya
Umnikelo imbo isekhaya
Umnikelo livukuvuku lifuna imbo yalo
Ndizinikela ekhaya
Ndizinikela ekhaya embo
Ndifuna ukuba yimbo yasekhaya
Umnikelo yimbo yasekhaya
Kwikhaya likaNomakhaya
Imbo yam
Imbono yam
Ngumbono lowo
Ihambi eya embo
Ndiyimbo yekhaya
Embodying body
Embodying conditioned acts of humanity
Embodying fragility
Embodying grounding spirits
Embodying transcended senses
Embo as a conscious awakening fluids
Umzimba womile
Ingqondo ibalele
Umoya unxaniwe
Umhlaba womile
Amehlo abona luzizi
Umlomo uqokole
Amathambo omile
Umnikelo/The Offering: Umfazi Osenyangeni (Women the moon weave into being)
/ This series seeks to capture, reflect and honor women's labor, resilience and contribution. It stands as a symbolic approach to the enduring power of traditional practices and vital role women play in sustaining them. Through rituality and meditative acts, ivukuvuku celebrates the ways women nurture nature, uphold cultural knowledge, and transform communities
/As they gather
/As they weave
/As they offer
/As they nurture
/Kwimveli kaMveli ladalwa
/Ingeloxhoba
/Yimbewu yomyalelo
/Isisekelo
/Imbali yengxelo
/Imbali yethemba
/Imbali ngethemba
/Inimba
Each thread
Each act
Each offering
Each rituality
/Becomes
/As they gather
/As they weave
/As they offer
/As they return
/Into sacred being
MTHOMBONDINI! MTHOMBONDINI! MTHOMBONDINI!
(women the moon weaves into being)
In this ongoing series, ivukuvuku examines the water elemental not only as a medium for communal and collective engagement but as an ancient sub-consciousness notion of skin—an ever-changing entity in which body, mind, and soul embody or submerge into forms of sacred portal. This performative phase and creative research delves into the idea of skin as a form of place, space, and memory that continuously submerge into its surroundings and, furthermore, to human behavior, conditioned waste and shared humanity. This multi-sensory approach to skin representation evokes imagery reminiscent of a space suggesting a body that mirrors its environment in both site and insight. Ivukuvuku aims to emphasis the core essence of skin that remains visible through the echoes of time. The portrayal of various bodies laced in water reflect the expansive nature of transformation. Through these gatherings and performative rituals, Ivukuvuku cultivate and hold a moon-led space for exploration, question, dissect, and collective exchange, reawakening practices of belonging and reconnection.
