Khanyisa Agnes Brancon’s notes on indigenous knowledge, new ways of working and the studio space.
Estimated reading time: 4-5 minutes
1. How did engaging with elders and knowledge keepers challenge or affirm your existing worldview?
My introduction to art has always been fear-based and very much defensive. Art school always teaches you to be prepared for the worst-case scenario: a lot of backstabbing and downfalls within the art industry.
So, before engaging with the elders, I had just graduated and was operating in defence mode.Additionally, I had made the decision to leave Joburg and come home to Polokwane. My worldview before the elders was very much about thinking inside the box and focusing on how many limitations I was facing.
Encountering them really diversified and opened up my worldview. They made me realise and understand that you can never really move with intention when you are defensive with your work and with your practice. They also made me realise that you can exist outside of the limitations and constraints that everybody creates for you.
What I took away from engaging with and witnessing their independent careers, which are situated in very remote areas, was that they have continued to make a livelihood, a self-sustaining livelihood, and maintain a career out of all of that. They made me realise that I really can do this odd thing, and that there are so many of us who exist outside of the structures of practising in urban spaces and practising in cities.
The second point was really leading into indigenous practice and learning to find ways to carry my culture from its past and its present, while also helping pave a way to its future.
You don't have to leave your culture behind. Culture is a living, breathing art form that is allowed to expand and change and be reinterpreted at any point in time. In fact, its expansion is relianton exactly that.
2. Did the trip change your material choices, visual language, or approach to making? If so, how?
The trip changed my approach to making. It made me accept slowness, because I take my time when I practise. I'm not an artist who is in the studio every day, but I did realise that even in my slowness, I should be in the studio every day. I should have my own time limits or my own blocks of time, and I don't have to force or feel that something should be done within that time block.
It taught me to accept and understand the nature, flow and rhythm of how I work. That's the change that was brought into my practice after the trip.
Additionally, my material choices have expanded. It's the culinary experience in Venda that made me actually start looking at a more expansive way of approaching material. I’ve become obsessed with preserving things like morogo, mealies and beans, then arranging them into detailed, ornamented patterns within my work.
Clay stood out more because it made me realise how versatile soil can be. It opened my mind to wood carving, frame-making, and thinking about how wood, textile and other materials can become one thing. I’m interested in the frame becoming an extension of the artwork, not just a tool or accessory, but an artwork in itself.
I also became really obsessed with beads, particularly gold beads, and that’s something I’ve adopted into my practice alongside beadwork and wood carving. I like the idea of taking a material and embossing your identity onto it.
Visually, my work has become much more sculptural. I’m coming to terms with the idea that a good artwork doesn’t always have to be a painting or a photograph. It can simply be a form that exists — something I take time to make and genuinely enjoy making. So that’s literally my thing.
3. Did any mentor challenge the way you think about authorship?
Yes, all of them did. The first artist we saw, Vho-Nekhofhe, when we went to his house and he had his guitar, challenged how I understand authorship of my work.
He made me realise that your studio is your arsenal. Your studio needs to have everything that you need, whether you're going to use it or not. You have to take care of your inventory. Your inventory is yours, and there's nothing that can be considered waste or something that isn't going to be used.
From the guitar to the totems he made, and the big chunk of wood, that made me realise that everything is a tool, but it's only an artist who knows what a tool is.
Another one was Vho-Noria. She shook up how I understood authorship through her building a museum in her backyard. Her home wasn't only her sanctuary, it doubles as an institution that has different functions.
There's a space where she dreams. It's a space that houses her intellectual property. I didn't get to go, but hearing about it was just beautiful.
Her yard being a space where people meet her with respect and with so much authority, while also having her daughter handle things for her, made me realise that you need a team when you do this. You need people who believe in you.
Authorship is also about learning to create a system that really works for you. That, for me, was big.
Seeing her practice and her journey made me realise that this is a lifelong commitment. There is no point in life where you should feel like this is a hobby. The day you take it up as a lifelong commitment, you know that you have to respect it as a craft, but also bring along a team that will allow you to really take your time.
She made me realise that authorship also means being committed to this as a lifelong career, and bringing a team with you in this journey. It's custodianship of your practice and your work beyond yourself.
4. Were there moments where you found yourself returning to a mentor's teachings while making decisions in the studio?
To stop being afraid. I think I'm always afraid of starting anything because not only does it meanI've started, it means I have to commit to it.
My biggest anxiety when making work is not knowing how it's going to look in the end. Imagine you're doing that and you also include working with a method that you haven't built confidence in. For me lately, that's been painting. So most of what they said, for me, has just been about having courage and taking it slow, and seeing this as a lifelong thing.
I’ve lost interest in the commercial rush of always taking your work to a gallery. There’s a point where your work leaves your hands, and you don’t know where it’s going to go, and I’ve really lost interest in all of that. I just feel like I want to run at my own pace.
5. What responsibility, if any, do you feel to carry these teachings forward through your work?
To extend what I believe in, in terms of my culture, is one of the reasons why I’m making work like that. Even when there aren’t people buying, it isn’t a reflection of the work. It shouldn’t determine or make me feel like my work isn’t worth it.