Lungiswa Gqunta’s work looks head on at the painful legacies of colonialism and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Through it, Gqunta illuminates ways of knowing that have so often been discredited by the atrocities of these frameworks.

The spaces she conjures deny the curtailments imposed upon African systems of knowledge by colonial conquests. From them, new – and ancient – libraries of information emerge to be shared and invested in.

The eightieth edition of the Henry Moore Institute’s Essays on Sculpture series is published to accompany the exhibition ‘Lungiswa Gqunta: Sleep in Witness’.

Sleep in Witness marks Gqunta’s largest exhibition to date and includes two substantial new installations Zinodaka and Ntabamanzi (both 2022).

Essays on Sculpture 80 includes a new essay by Nombuso Mathibela, a cultural worker, educator and sonic practitioner based in Johannesburg, and also reproduces the interpretative wall texts that Mathibela produced for the exhibition.

Published on occasion of the exhibition: ‘Lungiswa Gqunta: Sleep in Witness’, 8 Jul – 30 Oct 2022, Henry Moore Institute, UK.