R EV I EW / ROB IN SC H E R

Vumelani Sibeko
Where is the New Key?
Harlem to Brooklyn, New York
hosted by Apex Art, in New York. He returned
from the residency indelibly changed the
restrictions placed on his work by the social
conditions of home made vividly apparent.
"I felt like I was in a bottle, I could see where
I wanted to go but I couldn't get there. I felt
limited, enclosed" he notes.
The trip awoke in Vumelani a realisation of the
universality of the message present in his work.
No matter what, he knew he needed to return
to New York, doing so on 2 April 2014 with little
more than his backpack, some canvasses and
paintbrushes. His plan, a project titled Get on
the Bridge, was to experience life as a homeless
person, living on the streets of New York and
creating art as his sole means for survival. His
intention? "To bridge cultures," manifesting in
his performance of Where is the New Key?

Vumelani Sibeko passing Hoyt Street Station in Brooklyn en route to the Brooklyn Bridge. Photograph: Kqwon King.

"Mommy, he's trapped," whispers a wide-eyed

little girl, standing on the corner of Malcolm X
Blvd. and W 122nd St in Harlem. A dreadlocked
black man, in a torn-up t-shirt and pants, slowly
walks barefoot ahead of the girl, dragging a
55-pound iron ball attached to a chain that
connects to a pair of shackles around his ankles,
hands and neck. "Yes, he is," softly explains
her mother. "That's what they used to make
slaves wear." The girl nods, still baffled by the
man wearing no shoes on this freezing, late fall
morning, "But why does he still have them on?"
A short pause follows, as her mother searches
for an explanation, "Well, maybe as a reminder,
honey. We don't have the chains anymore, but
many of us are still trapped." The man, South
African visual artist Vumelani Sibeko, continues
his march, unaware of the mother and daughter,
or much else outside of the pain he feels and
his determination to realise a life-long vision.

84 ARTSOUTHAFRICA

The performance titled, Where is the New

Key? is a challenge. Physically, it is a great one
for Vumelani, who plans to march from Harlem,
catching the A train to High St. station, Brooklyn
and on to the African Burial Ground National
Monument in Manhattan, crossing back over
the Brooklyn Bridge. To the unwitting audience
of passers-by, it is a challenge to reconsider
the past and how it has carried through to the
present.
Vumelani dragged his first ball and chain on
Youth Day, 2011, marching over five kilometres
from his studio at the Drill Hall, in downtown
Johannesburg, to the Hector Pieterson
Memorial in Soweto. He repeated this the
following year in Alexandra, during the time of
the xenophobic attacks. Soon after the second
performance, Vumelani was invited to take
part in a one month arts residency programme

"Why y'all dressed like that?" shouts a stocky

young man in the midst of his Black Friday
shopping on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. "It
ain't the 1800s, why bring that shit up?" he
asks, shoving his phone's camera in Vumelani's
exhausted face.
Vumelani is unable to respond, but had
predicted this reaction. "For a wound to be
healed it needs to be cleaned, and cleaning a
wound hurts. But, it will never heal if you don't
clean it up."
At four pm, Vumelani reaches the African Burial
Ground, tucked under the towers of the financial
district. Slouching, finally at rest, his head finds
ground. It is a moment of remembrance that
drives Vumelani's work. A need to look back in
order to move forward. As Vumelani explains,
"We are like trees; you have to remember where
you came from to know who you are. Roots that
go deeper suck more water."
Robin Scher is a New York based writer and recent
masters graduate of the Cultural Reporting and
Criticism program at NYU. His favorite room at