Bongumenzi Ngobese

BIOGRAPHY

Mr. Bongumenzi Ngobese (1987) is a fine arts lecturer at the Walter Sisulu University visual arts department in East London – Eastern Cape. He holds a master’s degree in fine arts which he obtained from the Durban University of Technology (2017). Bongumenzi is also an award-winning practicing artist whose conceptual interests are imagined from the healing practice of Ubungoma (divinity). He is the reciptiant of the Gerard Sekoto art award in the ABSA L’ atelier competition (2010).  His work gains inspiration from his lived experience as umngoma who at some point had to undergone through the intwaso process (initiation into becoming a diviner). To him, this process became more than just a passing phase or spatial occurrence. As both cultural and spiritual journey, it propelled in him a thought and realization of a type of visual language which he feels needed to be explored as it presented him with a spiritually inspired visual literacy that can be used as a form of aesthetic in his art practice. Bongumenzi is currently studying towards a PhD with Stellenbosch University where he explores the influence of Ubungoma in his art practice.

RESEARCH

PhD Research Topic 

An embodied Enquiry into Ubungoma as Spiritual Practice through Art-Making.

Research conceptual framework

My research grapples with the fundamental challenge of how I, as a modern practitioner of ubungoma and an artist, engage in a process of creative discovery that considers the borderlessness of the artist-isangoma as an embodied and cultural experience.
This research seeks to engage and materialize themes and philosophical considerations that inhere in a spiritual visual and sonic vocabulary originating from ubungoma. It will places at its center an indigenous conceptual vocabulary – imibono; ukubhodla nokuvuka kwedlozi; ukuvuma idlozi; ukuthwasa – and their use as a contemporary vernacular of spiritual meaning-making as the well spring of intellection and creative exploration. It also enacts the theoretical considerations of what it means as an insider to reflect upon and engage with discourses surrounding ubungoma in South African contemporary art.