Inclusion of convicted murderer Zwelethu Mthethwa’s art in exhibition sparks outrage

The inclusion of a convicted murderer’s artwork in an exhibition has unleashed a furious debate

What should happen to the artistic work of a convicted murderer?

Should it be hidden away, never to be seen and critiqued?

Or can it be used to educate and highlight the contradiction between art and evil?

That is the debate raging in the art world and activist circles after world-renowned painter and photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa – who is serving a prison sentence for murdering a sex worker – was included in an exhibition.

Earlier this week, the Sex Workers’ Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat), artists and social justice activists launched a petition against the inclusion of Mthethwa’s work in an exhibition in the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria.

To date, the petition has garnered 925 signatures.

In 2017, Mthethwa was sentenced to 18 years in prison following the murder of 23-year-old Nokuphila Kumalo. Kumalo was beaten and stomped to death by Mthethwa in Cape Town on April 13 2013. The crime was captured on CCTV and showed Mthethwa attacking her next to his Porsche.

In sentencing Mthethwa, Judge Patricia Goliath noted the “callousness, cruelty and brutality” of Mthethwa’s actions.

There was similar outrage and public protests in 2017, when Mthethwa’s work was displayed at the Our Lady exhibition at the Iziko National Gallery.

The exhibition at the Javett centre, titled All in a Day’s Eye: The Politics of Innocence, was curated by Gabi Ngcobo. She and the University of Pretoria’s vice-chancellor, Prof Tawana Kupe, were called on to take responsibility for providing space for a murderer’s artwork.

Ngcobo responded by saying that the inclusion of Mthethwa’s artwork was intended to spark conversation about gender-based violence.

“As black women working in the arts, we too feel that the misogyny that is often hidden in art spaces has long affected women personally, professionally, violently, and it needs to be discussed openly with different constituencies of society,” she said.

But Sweat’s Lesego Tlhwale said that including the work of a convicted murderer was not the way to go. “It is silencing and makes the victims invisible,” she said.

Sweat and other activist groups have demanded that the work, titled The Wedding Party (1996), be removed immediately.

“We do not doubt the curator’s intentions to prompt an important conversation, but we believe that it is terribly misguided to centre such a discussion on Mthethwa’s work.

“The bottom line for our call is to get his artwork removed and for any other work he has produced never to be displayed again in public galleries,” said Tlhwale.

They also called on other artists whose work is being exhibiting at the Javett centre to protest by removing their pieces.

Acclaimed South African artist Candice Breitz answered the call this week and withdrew her work.

The centre is believed to have turned down a request to replace Breitz’s work with a protest placard from Sweat’s #SayHerName campaign reading: “My name was Nokuphila Kumalo. I was a sex worker. I was 23 years old. I was found beaten to death. Zwelethu Mthethwa has been convicted for my murder.”

Ngcobo maintained that the message behind placing Mthethwa’s work in the show had been misconstrued.

“I wanted this collection to be seen, experienced and read through black women’s eyes. We did not have to show all the works in the collection, so we made very thought-out choices. It was not an easy decision to show The Wedding Party by Mthethwa.

“His work is there [so that] we never forget what he did and because it was an opportunity to unpack his work alongside that ultimate violent act that we got to know about because a life was lost,” she said.

Tlhwale said she could not imagine how Kumalo’s mother would feel knowing that Mthethwa’s incarceration had not stopped him from having his work seen.

South African multimedia artist Athi-Patra Ruga said the issue raised “bigger, long-standing questions about the art world’s ethics”.

“These won’t simply go away by removing and denying [viewers] the opportunity to witness and be part of the national debate and have the autonomy to make up their own minds,” she said.

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