Professor Premesh Lalu celebrates David Koloane’s life as a purveyor of “a lover’s discourse” in a piece published in the Daily Maverick. The passing of David Koloane was a sad moment felt by the South African art world and beyond. Thabo Mbeki described David Koloane as “a fighter for the liberation of our people.”

In celebrating the life of David Koloane, Professor Lalu writes, “If Koloane’s name serves as a reminder, it is to the extent that it lends itself to the formative experience of an artist who stepped out of the studio, gathered the remains of the everyday, so as to transform scraps of urban life into scattered speculations of holding on to desire. Against the exteriority of violence and uncertainty of the everyday, the struggle against apartheid would entail an effort to hold on to the interiority of self, of finding a place of quiet through which to transform the wonderful collisions of the urban into a semblance of colour and compassion.”

In speaking about the artists of David’s generation, Professor Lalu emphasise that “The artists of David’s generation revealed a texture of urban life that was both intriguing as it was revolting. Like James Matthews short story, “11:50 to Simonstown,” Koloane too would seek to hold on to the motif of movement, of passing time, for a return to the interiority of a bludgeoned subjectivity. If the everyday was a unifying theme across a spectrum of artistic works in the 1980s, its milieu was less that of the conquest of machine over human, but the withdrawal of the subject into spaces of shared reflection, into the workshop, in a bid to remake a life undercut by the rituals of state violence. Koloane formed part of a tradition of composite artists who together composed the soundtracks and images that compelled us to live beyond apartheid.”

Professor Lalu ends by thanking David Koloane for the education he bestowed on him and others. He then makes a promise to continue “to work hard to ensure that we do not become mauling dogs, or surrender to the temptations of postcolonial cannibalism.” Furthermore he states that there is so much more that needs to be said about David Koloane’s work and his impact on South Africa and South African art. “But for now, I want you to join me in celebrating this purveyor of ‘a lover’s discourse.’”

The full article can be accessed from:

A few months before David Koloane’s passing. Professor Lalu was asked to open the “A Resilient Visionary: Poetic Expressions of David Koloane” exhibition at the Iziki Museum where professor Lalu spoke about the impactful work of David Koloane. The remarks made by Professor Lalu can be accessed from the Iziko website: http://www.iziko.org.za/news/david-koloane-purveyor-lovers-discourse