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Mikhael Subotzky presents new work and collaborates with The Brother Moves On at Maitland Institute in Cape Town

For the past six years, Mikhael Subotzky has been systematically pulling images apart in an attempt to ‘get inside’ them and understand their representational function. While on residency at the Maitland Institute in Cape Town, Subotzky continues his process of dismantling and reconstituting images, working for the first time with paint and ink on canvas, as well as in collaborative performance with The Brother Moves On. Simultaneous to his residency, Subotzky hosts a ‘work in progress’ exhibition, Yellow Bile (or Work in Progress) (14 September – 31 October) at Maitland Institute. These new formal constituents are wielded around Subotzky’s personal iconography – images that he has found and made that resonate with his experiences, as well as certain texts foundational to his understanding of the world.

The collaborative performance with The Brother Moves On, Four Rehearsals in the Yellow Bile, will take place within the exhibition on the opening night (14 September). It too will ‘pull apart’ the underlying texts and images of Subotzky’s works, while also introducing the narratives and imagery of performance and collaboration synonymous with The Brother Moves On. The performance features Thantaswa May as the female protagonist stuck in the Bile, under the watchful eye of the characters’ current reality. Her story, an ode to Nina Simone’s Four Women and the Marikana widows amongst others, will be sung in counterpoint and conflict with TS Eliot’s Four Quartets (read by Subotzky) and accompanied by a percussive and musical score by Zelizwe Mthembu. The performance takes place in four parts from 17:30 – 20:30.

This ‘work in progress’ exhibition thus introduces a new stream in Subotzky’s work, a cross-medium attempt to illustrate and understand T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets. Drawing on a long history of artists’ ‘illustration’ of classic texts, Subotzky seeks to get inside a text that has been fundamental to his aesthetic and philosophical understanding of the world. It is a project that he estimates he will be preoccupied with for many years to come.