Ngiyiboneleni? A Solo Exhibition by CWA winner Smiso Cele

ABOUT THE SHOW

Bag Factory is pleased to present Ngiyiboneleni? a solo exhibition by Smiso Cele following his completion of the Cassirer Welz Award 2025 residency. This exhibition is a continuation of an ongoing project, Ebhuqwini (2024). Where he refers to the intimacy of a bedroom he shared with his siblings as a way of building intimacy and acquainting himself with places he finds himself in (Johannesburg). 

The title, Ngiyiboneleni?, is a phrase Cele has come to hear primarily through his mother’s use of it to call attention to one’s uncontrollable desire to overuse or overeat something that is not usually around. Embodied by the phrase are ideas around repetition and persistence. In the context of this exhibition, Ngiyiboneleni?, as a phrase, is envisaged through a bread clip as a way of reckoning with the lack of warmth that exists as Cele moves through the world and further away from home. An attempt at questioning and reconciling the constant return to and reliance on objects for soothing memories concerning home. In this exhibition, Cele connects the relativity of the room ebhuqwini, which in its form existed as a storage space, building an intimate relationship between objects, the environment, and the self.

The use of the bread clip signifies not only his developing understanding of relationality, but the comfort of familiarity, remembering the ways he would use the object as a toothpick or chew on it as a stimulation of comfort. The use of the bread clip provides a comparable feeling of comfort that Cele longs for, as well as that which he experienced ebhuqwini (the bedroom).

Smiso Cele, 2, 2025, Steel-shovels-and-Plywood, 195.5 x 64.5 x 102 cm.