Simnikiwe Buhlungu

The solo exhibition hygrosummons (iter.01) (6th September–3rd November 2024) by Simnikiwe Buhlungu (b.1995) FIG.1 at Chisenhale Gallery, London FIG.2, is a call to moisture and all that it brings to a building or space. Taking the hygrometer, a device that measures humidity, as its starting point, the newly commissioned work comprises installation, sculpture and sound. On the floor are plastic buckets emblazoned with smiling suns, which contain water collected from four locations: the Tswaing impact crater in Soshanguve, South Africa; the artist’s mother’s maize garden; the Salse di Nirano nature reserve in Fiorano Modenese; and puddles on the street outside the gallery in East London. Heavy wooden doors have been installed at the entrance to the exhibition, warped and unfit for purpose after being submerged in the Hertford Union Canal, which runs alongside the building. Two mechanically operated zithers emit a continuous score, while drawings on paper curl away from the walls. Each element fluctuates in response to the humidity levels in the gallery, creating an installation that changes constantly around the viewer.

Buhlungu’s projects often include extensive research and are perhaps best described as theoretical considerations. Using film, sound, installation and text, she analyses the production and dissemination of knowledge. In 2022 her work And the Other Thing I Was Saying Was: A Conver-something FIG.3 FIG.4 was included in Cecilia Alemani’s Venice Biennale exhibition, The Milk of Dreams. The interactive sound installation comprised theremins – instruments that respond to electromagnetic fields around the body – and synthesisers, combined with pink noise and music to produce what the artist terms as a ‘conver-something’. At the Chisenhale, Buhlungu’s facilitation of the passages of moisture as a creative force speaks to her interest in the systems of knowledge, history and ecology. Amah-Rose Abrams spoke to the artist about her use of water, where it came from and where it might end up.

Amah-Rose Abrams: I wanted to start by asking you about the exhibition title hygrosummons (iter.01). Where does it come from?

Simnikiwe Buhlungu: hygrosummons comes from the fact that the exhibition functions as a sort of collapsed hygrometer. A hygrometer is a tool used to measure humidity; most people know them in the context of labs but they also use them in the culinary industry. They also use them for musical instruments and in chicken coops, they’re everywhere, but I wasn’t interested in replicating another one of these scientific tools.

A lot of my research took place in conversation with scientists. The language of how we understand the hygrometer is strongly dependent on Western science, but I did a lot of research on science from other parts of the world, and thinking about humidity and hygrometers from other contexts. I thought about the idea of hygro as opposed to hydro: hygro as a thing that anticipates absorption, or anticipates a call or the response, something that is open and porous, that is willing to take in and hold. I’m bringing these ideas of hygro into the exhibition, while taking them apart at the same time.

Then, for ‘summons’, this is because I’m literally calling on the presence of water. For me, water arriving through the body of a puddle – especially in London, where it rains quite a lot – is a way to indicate this calling to specific bodies of water, while also being aware of the Chisenhale’s location on the Hertford Union Canal. What has that canal seen, what has it transported, what has landed there, what has evaporated and exited the canal? It’s a very interesting gathering site for the dampness to arrive through the doors, which hold that humidity. I think that site-specificity is really important for this exhibition.

A-RA: Why is that?

SB: Firstly, the canal. Secondly, the conditions of the space and architecture. Lately in my practice, I’ve been working within the limitations of say, traditional art spaces. They’re often not made for sound. It could be tall ceilings and ornate Swiss–German architecture, which is fantastic to display painting or sculpture, but it’s a nightmare for working with sound. So, I was really interested in working with that nightmare – with the reverberation and the echo. I wanted to work with the conditions that the space presents. Often, we have to alter the space before it can receive a project. What happens if you depart from the condition as it is?

It was also important to have a space that allowed people to sit within the humidity or dampness as a way of reckoning with the presence of water bodies. More specifically, the puddle is interesting for me because it’s about sensing and being in a space of quietude. I knew I didn’t want to make an exhibition that involved just having a giant puddle in the middle of the gallery. I wanted to think about how to approach this through other means. I arrived at humidity, moisture and dampness, and all the things that they pick up along the way. The Chisenhale is a great space because it essentially is a white cube space, but with all these other elements and references that you can draw on.

A-RA: The doors that you’ve installed FIG.5 are made from swollen wood and can’t be fully closed. They get stuck or become obstructive, so the visitor can’t help but engage with them. That’s an interesting touch.

SB: My mother has a tool shed at the house in Johannesburg where I grew up. The door is painted with red, glossy paint, but with time it has absorbed so much water that it’s swollen and we can’t actually close it. You have to lift the door, turn your body forty-five degrees and play around with the handle. For me, these kinds of holdings of water are very specific references that have translated well in this context.

A-RA: The visitor enters the gallery through these doors, which are very evocative, and then once inside there are plastic containers for the puddles. Why did you choose those specific tubs?

SB: These buckets hold a cheap water-based paint called Supa PVA FIG.6. It’s a ubiquitous bucket that often gets re-used. At home, we used one for collecting rainwater and one under the sink. This was interesting for me not so much because of the smiling sun on the front, but more because of the ubiquity of the material itself and where exactly it’s often seen or found. I mentioned that it’s cheap paint specifically because of its presence within a specific socio-economic bracket in South Africa. You’re not going to middle- or upper-income homes and see Supa PVA buckets, but in a Black person’s home, you’ll probably see them. It’s an intentional choice in terms of the vessel holding these samples.

I mentioned that this paint is ubiquitous within a specific bracket, but it wasn’t easy to source. It was only available in select stores, and even getting it to a place in South Africa to decant it was difficult. So, we had the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town assist us. We sent the buckets to them, they decanted them and helped us get them to London.

A-RA: You often work with sound and you have two autonomous zithers FIG.7 playing in the space, creating a live soundtrack to the work. Why did you decide on this particular instrument?

SB: I typically have books that I read for a few years at a time and one of them is Francis Bebey’s Musique de l’Afrique (1969). The book details different categories of musical instruments in the African continent up until the 1960s. It’s an amazing breakdown, including percussion, zithers and lamellophones. I was thinking about tension and string guitars, but there was also the question of materiality. So I returned to my research on hygroscopicity – the phenomenon of something being porous to water. A lot of natural materials, such as cotton, raffia and silk, are very hygroscopic. So I made the strings out of raffia. This is where a kind of counterproductivity starts to happen, because making the strings porous means that we start to hear the humidity. How do we hear the presence of a puddle, navigating through space, through the water cycle, doing its thing on the outside? We can hear it through the zithers in the space.

A-RA: How was the composition that they play conceived?

SB: These instruments need to exist in conversation, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to have that if they were just objects. They needed to play themselves and have some autonomy in how they sound. There needed to be a conversation between the two of them, but also space for something else to come. When you walk into the space, it’s almost like a triangle that you’re navigating. There’s a vibrating bucket that contains a sample of clay mud from Salse di Nirano, which is one of my research sites. It’s responding to the composition, because I was thinking a lot about sampling. I wondered whether the instruments could sample themselves? Could they sample time? But in the end, I made my own composition, which lasts about thirty-six minutes. 

I’m also layering the sound. There’s audio from a pre-recording on the first day alongside the live music. For me, time is important when thinking about puddles: when they arrive, how long they stay and when they decide to leave. And thinking about time sonically, can we have something that’s already happened intermingled with what’s happening now? Another question is, how do we hear the humidity?

A-RA: Do you consider your work with sound to be sound or music, and how did it come into your practice?

SB: I would say I confidently started to work with sound when I was studying fine art at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. I’m not a sound artist, I’m an artist who works with sound. I know for a lot of people, they don’t see the difference but there is one for me. As for it being music, I’m not releasing an album just yet!

A-RA: You have worked with sound in many ways, from Notes To Self: (Intimate 1), Mixtape 1 (2020), which incorporated voice notes recorded by passers-by, to And the Other Thing I Was Saying Was: A Conver-something. What do you think sound brings to your work?

SB: Sound functions as a tangent but also a parallel possibility in the research elements of my practice. It’s a way to arrive at a cognisance of various forms of knowledge that sit outside of the ocular. Sound can be a signal for the visual, but it also eschews very limiting and hegemonic understandings of what knowledge production can look like and exist as. I’ve worked with sound in lots of projects, notably through sampling, ‘composing’ my own songs, narratives or thinking of polyphony and a Khuaya (pronounced ‘choir’). I’ve also delved into synthesis and how sound can be a way of sensing phenomena that are typically not visible to the ‘naked’ eye.

A-RA: Another element in the show is the warping and curling of the drawings FIG.8, which reveals hidden messages on the reverse in the form of drawings and notes as the water affects the paper.

SB: The elements in the exhibition sense the presence of moisture and all respond in different ways. You see warping, you see curling. You can hear and you see dampness on your skin. What does the puddle think about that? What do all other elements in my research, which could not come in as maybe physical elements or sensing, think about that? How can I bring that in as something that the hygrometer or the exhibition could become self-aware about? So, the information on the back of the drawings was crucial in terms of thinking about secrets, whispers and things that we’re not supposed to know because they’re earned with time.

A-RA: I wondered about the relationship between London and dampness. There’s always moisture where it shouldn’t be in London. I think you’re talking about the irreverence of water, was that inspired by the location?

SB: I live in Amsterdam, and I don’t know if I would describe it as damp, but I’d definitely describe it as wet, constantly wet, frustratingly wet, so I was already coming into this exhibition with this in mind. And then, after speaking with the team and working with the curators, Olivia Aherne and Amy Jones, I became enamoured by the specificities of the space and the fact that this is a gallery where, for some exhibitions, the curators have to work against its physical conditions. I’m from South Africa, so I didn’t grow up with dampness, in as much as I grew up with dryness.

A-RA: It’s almost like a conceptual ecosystem, what you’ve created.

SB: Absolutely. Now, when I see a puddle, the first question I ask is, where have you been? What do you see? Where did you just come from? And what does it mean that you’ve landed here right now?