Nokukhanya Langa - nana

Opening Sat. 17th of May | 15.00 - 19.00

17 May - 29 June 2025
Penitentenstraat 29, 9000 Gent

Nokukhanya Langa’s solo exhibition titled ‘nana’ opens 17 May 2025 in our space at Penitentenstraat 29, Gent and will be on view until 29 June 2025.

“nana” was Nokukhanya Langa’s childhood nickname, and for her, it evokes all the personal connections and memories from a youth spent in different parts of the world. At the same time, “nana” is also one of the first sounds a child learns to make—a soft, universal syllable often used when something is missing or forgotten, like the words to a song. The word holds a collective meaning that resonates universally, while also carrying a personal significance unique to the artist—an interplay that runs throughout her entire body of work.

Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA, and now based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Langa has grown up living between the United States, India, South Africa, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Her art practice reconciles the pluralities of her personal story, mixed cultural heritage, and lived experiences; all coming together to form part of her large-scale paintings, filled with vibrant imagery in a stream-of-consciousness style.

Unlearning the rigidity of her training in traditional oil painting, she plays with abstract motifs; colour, swirls, and other fluid shapes, working in unison with more recognisable motifs like text and signs. Shifting back and forth between figuration and abstraction, the result is an agile use of approachable jargon and aesthetics that convey the more subtle, and incendiary subtext of the works in a kind of hallucinatory reality. Langa's work has been exhibited at major institutions including, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020-2021); Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2022) and chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai, China (2023) and currently at S.M.A.K., Ghent, BE (2025).

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Contact us for more information or to receive a catalog of works:
+32 (0) 9 391 39 13
desk@barbegallery.be

‘nana’ - text by Sam Steverlynck.

Nokukhanya Langa is celebrated for her bold, layered paintings that reinterpret the traditional canvas. Her use of vivid colors, playful imagery, and a mix of abstraction with occasional figurative hints brings a sense of deceptive lightness to her work. Over these rich oil compositions, she often applies graphic elements such as prints, scribbles, signs, and other marks. These interventions add complexity and depth, mirroring both the visual chaos of contemporary life and her own mixed cultural heritage.

For her first solo exhibition at BARBÉ Gallery, titled ‘nana,’ Langa delves into her past. The title refers to the nickname she was given as a child while living across the United States, India, South Africa, and later in the Netherlands and Belgium. The sound ‘nana is simple in its repetition, it is easily pronounced in all these regions, much like ‘mama,’ evoking notions of origin and comfort. It’s also reminiscent of the humming sound we make when forgetting song lyrics, a metaphor Langa uses to explore the fragmented nature of memory. 

Through this exhibition, she aims to piece together the blanks of her past, navigating the fluidity of time and the elusive nature of memory. Rather than relying on confessional storytelling, she remains restrained, using mostly abstract forms complemented by dots, words, and symbols that are often painted over, barely visible, hinting at lost memories.

The exhibition serves as a personal cartography, mapping memories that shift and transform, triggered by names, sounds, or scents. Her paintings reflect this constant flux: colorful dots symbolize the brain’s chemical processes; swirling shapes evoke racing thoughts; gradients represent the fading of memories. Arrows and diagrams suggest interconnectedness, a chain of cause and effect, leading to new insights and understanding. Nokukhanya Langa also confronts repression, bringing the hidden layers of memory to the surface. Her 3D, puffed-up canvases conceal elements beneath thick layers, symbolizing the subconscious as a nod to Freudian ideas of the Id, not buried but textured into her work. Overpainted words and darkened surfaces hint at memories obscured by time and experience, their presence felt even if partially hidden.

With this new body of work, Langa maps her stream of consciousness, exploring impulses, obsessions, and reflections. Her paintings act as dialogues between her younger and present self, merging instinct with analysis. It is both a deeply personal journey and a universal exploration of how memory and identity are continuously shaped and reshaped.