Simnikiwe Buhlungu: hygrosummons (iter.01)

hygrosummons (iter.01) marks the first UK solo exhibition by South African, Amsterdam-based artist Simnikiwe Buhlungu. Comprising installation, sculpture, and sound, Buhlungu’s new commission summons water, in particular ‘puddles’, to reveal the ways knowledge, history, and ecology circulate and pool. 
 
Conspiring with the conditions of the gallery and materials that hold and release water, Buhlungu transforms Chisenhale Gallery into a porous and changeable site. Departing from the hygrometer—a scientific instrument used to measure humidity—the commission turns away from accuracy, and towards convening, sensing, and misbehaving with water. 

Warped wooden doors mark the thresholds between inside and outside, public and private. Submerged in the neighbouring Hertford Union Canal prior to their installation, they are repurposed as rafts for birdlife, homes for pondweed, and to gather water. No longer functioning as intended, the swollen pine doors ask us: what else permeates the space, conspicuously or otherwise? 

Samples of puddles taken from four geographical sites—the Tswaing Crater in Soshanguve, Buhlungu’s mother’s backyard maize garden, the Salse di Nirano Nature Reserve in Fiorano Modenese, and puddles outside of Chisenhale Gallery—are distributed across a series of buckets. Leaking, irrigating, and vibrating, they are connected by the hydrological cycle, where a puddle in Johannesburg might travel across the same atmospheric current as another in East London. As the samples reverberate across borders, evaporating into one another, contamination and kinship become indistinguishable from one another. 

Two zithers—whose forms are borrowed from Mvets, instruments originating in West and Central Africa—work through an original score. As humidity levels fluctuate, their strings tighten and loosen, creating unstable tonal shifts which are sampled, through playback, to mark the puddles’ arrival and departure throughout the space. 

Brick air vents, made with clay from Salse di Nirano’s mud puddles, are incorporated into the walls, and release humidity into the publicly inaccessible spaces of the building. Works on paper, a material that often necessitates controlled humidity, draw in the dampness from the gallery’s exterior wall, disobediently curling to reveal concealed messages – here, water acts as an accomplice. 

Buhlungu’s publication, titled besides Puleng; dontsa-ring and roving preoccupations, will be released in October 2024, co-published by Chisenhale Gallery, Kunstinstituut Melly, and Mousse Publishing. 

Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s exhibition continues Chisenhale Gallery’s Commissions Programme for 2024–25, which includes exhibitions by Joshua Leon, Rory Pilgrim, and Bruno Zhu. Invitations to witness, gather, and gossip run through the programme, with material and temporal interrogations, built environments, and unscripted chance encounters pushing the boundaries of exhibition making.

Events
As part of the commissioning process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Simnikiwe Buhlungu, spanning the duration of the exhibition.

Walk
Saturday, October 12, 2–5pm
Neo-futuristic Walks and artist and researcher Laura Copsey lead a group walk connecting local bodies of water through microfiction, world-building, and speculation.

Talk
Thursday, October 17, 7–8:30pm
In response to Buhlungu’s commission, writer and researcher Ella Finer explores how bodies of water disrupt claims to knowledge, history, and power.

Tour
Saturday, October 19, 11am–12pm
A walkthrough of hygrosummons (iter.01) with the exhibition’s curators Olivia Aherne and Amy Jones.

Workshops
Monday, October 28–Friday, November 1, 2–4pm
A week-long project for young people with Kin Structures (Arman Nouri and Kwame Lowe), responding to themes from Buhlungu’s commission.

All events are free to attend, but booking is essential. Please visit chisenhale.eventbrite.co.uk.

We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact mail [​at​] chisenhale.org.uk to discuss any access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.

Biography 
Simnikiwe Buhlungu lives and works in Amsterdam. Selected projects include: long time lung time continuuum!!! (a conver-something), Kunst im Tunnel (KIT), Düsseldorf, 2024; suggestures among us (Interlude), Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, 2023; A Lasting Truth Is Change, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2022; *dissonated underings [hic!], after- happenings and khuayarings (sithi “ahhhh!”), Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2022; The 59th Venice Biennale; Venice, 2022; The Show Is Over, South London Gallery, London, 2022; Scenorama, Javett-UP, Pretoria, 2022; Unravelling The (Under-) Development Complex, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2022; Territories Between Us, South African National Gallery, Iziko Museums, Cape Town, 2021; Small World Real World, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2020; My Summer Is Your Winter, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, 2019.

hygrosummons (iter.01) is produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam.

Lead Supporters: Mondriaan Fund and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Headline Supporters: Marcus and Alexa Waley-Cohen.

With additional support from the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund.

Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s publication besides Puleng; dontsa-ring and roving preoccupations is co-published by Chisenhale Gallery, London, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam and Mousse Publishing, Milan. 

With the generous support of: Mondriaan Fund, Mercedes Vilardell, Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.

Chisenhale Gallery’s Schools’ Programme 2024 is made possible through the generosity of Goodman Gallery and Freelands Foundation.

The 2023–24 Asymmetry Curatorial Research Fellow is hosted by Chisenhale Gallery.

Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity number: 1026175