Common Efforts—Intaka Yakha Ngoboya Benye: Lulama Wolf in dialogue with Sonja Ferlov Mancoba @ Eighteen Gallery

Eighteen is pleased to present the first major exhibition by South African painter Lulama Wolf in the Nordic region. Common Effort – Intaka Yakha Ngoboya Benye exposes a new body of work created in dialogue across generations and continents, with works of the late Danish-French sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911-1984). A founding member of the CoBRA, Ferlov Mancoba was also the creative life partner of South Africa’s pioneering avantgarde painter Ernest Mancoba (1904-2002), whose work and legacy has inspired and nurtured generations of artists, Wolf notwithstanding. Borrowing its title from the Ferlov Mancoba sculpture Effort Commun, which Wolf mirrors with a proverb in her native language isiXhosa, the exhibition seeks to unite the two artists’ intentions of affirming community and togetherness by exploring the potential of generative difference.

Lulama Wolf, b. 1993, lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. At the intersection of Neo-Expressionism and Modern African art, Wolf interrogates the precolonial African experience through the contemporary mind by using smearing, scraping, and deep pigment techniques that were used in vernacular architecture, and the patterns created largely by women to decorate traditional African homes. She has exhibited widely in South Africa and Europe. Recent exhibitions include: Ayakha: Indlela Yokuxola (Rebuilding: The Path to Forgiveness), THK Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, The Right to Ease, The Breeder, Athens, Greece, and Africa Now: Contemporary Painters, THK Cologne, Germany. In 2022, she was introduced to the Danish audience for the first time by THK Gallery at Enter Art Fair.