Biography
Khanya Zibaya (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinary storyteller, born in a small village in the Eastern Cape called Sikote in Mount Fletcher. He now lives and practices in Johannesburg. Zibaya works with visual performance, experimental video work, experimental painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. This also includes bodies and found objects to create juxtapositions of realities.
Synopsis
Ukuzila is a performative installation that confronts mourning as both ritual and lived condition. Rooted in the isiXhosa form, the understanding of ukuzila is, to abstain, to fast, to mourn. The work becomes a personal and embodied act of grief following the passing of my late mother, Lumka Zibaya, in 2022 during COVID who I had a complicated relationship with after growing up in Orphanage Care and experiencing homelessness.
Through the use of black plastic bags, assembled into a shifting sculptural or performative form, Ukuzila renders grief as both material and atmosphere. The installation evokes an ethereal yet suffocating presence, transforming space into a site of accumulation and release. Echoing a ritual duration, the performance unfolds over seven minutes, with the sculptural form existing temporarily; its removal after four days marking the passage of mourning.
