Gabi Ngcobo

The sound of The People by South African jazz pianist Andile Yenana has filled the ground floor of Kunstinstituut Melly for a few weeks now, setting the tone right away. It brings a feeling of comfort mingled with a slight ache — the kind that often accompanies the contemplation of beauty — that settles deep within me. Instinctively, I start searching for the source of the music, which, as I’ll later understand, emanates from the video Maroon Time by artist Zara Julius. During my search, a scent catches my attention and leads me directly to the window facing Witte de With street. There stands, in all its dignity, the sculptural work Majmua by Madiha Sikander — a giant curtain made of beads, threads and cloves. These two works, along with those by Liz Johnson Artur, give the visitor a sense of being welcomed, or even enveloped. It’s a matter of vibe, of atmosphere. This extends to the Tools for Conviviality space on the same floor, which subsumes café, bookstore and event space into a new experiment in shared space, with installations of second-hand furniture and a massive record collection for ‘DJ-led sonic lectures and community gatherings’. Warmth reigns here, and I feel a strong urge to stay. My journey continues upstairs with the five solo exhibitions by Cihad Caner, Jabu Arnell, Luana Vitra, Nolan Oswald Dennis and Sara Sejin Chang. Different worlds, yet a constant thread: powerful stories told with humility, simplicity and intelligence. Stories that, as Gabi Ngcobo will later tell me, create connections between Rotterdam and the rest of the world. Again, I’m struck by the possibilities that a place like this offers in its power to include or exclude. It’s dizzying.

My journey concludes in the art centre’s kitchen, where I sit down with Gabi Ngcobo, who succeeded Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy as director of Kunstinstituut Melly in January 2024, to discuss her journey and how she’s establishing herself in Rotterdam. Once again, I find myself in the presence of a person full of simplicity, humility and intelligence. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much during an interview. There’s a clear connection between what I felt in the space and what I feel with her.

Gabi Ngcobo is a South African curator, artist, and educator known for her involvement in collaborative artistic, curatorial and educational projects, both in South Africa and internationally. In the early 2000s, Ngcobo co-founded several collaborative platforms in Johannesburg, including the Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR) in 2010 and Nothing Gets Organized (NGO) in 2016. These initiatives explore self-organisational processes outside predefined structures and question the impact of historical legacies on contemporary art. In 2016, she co-curated the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, titled Incerteza Viva (Living Uncertainty), and in 2018 she was the lead curator for the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, titled We Don’t Need Another Hero.

SM: And on this path you’ve taken, how do you maintain that sense of community and constellation, even though it feels natural to you? That consciousness of where you come from?

GN: Of course, I think about it. That’s why I was interested in talking about Nástio and his practice — it’s a practice of refusal. I try not to make my whole practice about refusal, but to stay aware. We often trap ourselves because the system is so powerful that we don’t realise we’re already in it. And you learn that by being in the trap. It’s not like I’ve always escaped — I’ve found myself in situations where I thought, ‘This isn’t serving me or the people I care about; this is about something else.’ And then it’s about being brave, stubborn, or whatever enough to get yourself out of that. You can never fully escape, of course, because there are always things you have to do.

SM: You always have one foot inside. You can’t be completely outside.

GN: Yes, exactly. And then there’s the question: what is ‘outside’? Who’s outside? Who’s inside? It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially as I consider Nástio’s practice and what Fred Moten describes as ‘refusing what has been refused to you.’ That isn’t something you can be taught — it’s instinct. People sometimes ask, ‘How did you do that?’ And then we have to go back and think about it to make sense of it. It’s like how Franco (the influential Congolese musician and bandleader of TPOK Jazz, ed.) didn’t write music; he just made it. When people asked where the notes were, he’d say there were none. Sometimes we feel we need to go back and explain something, but I think we just need to learn how to navigate and create, letting that process generate a new language of engagement where we’re not constantly answering the question of ‘Who are you?’

SM: But in a world that asks people — especially curators and artists — to explain what they’re doing and to be transparent about their process, how can opacity still be inviting to the public, especially when you’re leading an institution?

GN: I took on this role because it’s a challenge. I’ve been in similar situations before, migrating in a sense. It hasn’t been easy because I’ve felt more alone than ever, essentially without my ‘tribe’. I had to find my own here.

What interests me about Kunstinstituut Melly, for instance, is that every six years there’s a new director, bringing fresh energy to the space. It’s not so much about where I want to go, because it’s often better not to know. Instead, it’s about creating a situation of inhabiting the unknown. I don’t need to know what’s going to happen in two or three years, but if I put certain things and questions in place, then things will start to weave together naturally. I follow the process of thinking, learning and hopefully making mistakes that aren’t too catastrophic, while trying to stay open.

There’s sometimes a perception that we work only to serve, and while that’s part of it, I don’t leave myself out of the process either. I work to learn as well, and I want to leave this place not feeling exhausted or empty; something has to come back to me too.

SM: Are you also open to changing a bit yourself as well?

GN: Absolutely. I think that’s important. I’m not stuck in my ways, but I also know what I don’t want.

SM: And what don’t you want?

GN: I don’t want to over-explain. As humanity, we’ve done so much work, and right now we’re at this painful moment where we’re shocked and hurt by seeing things we thought would remain in the past but are resurfacing in the present. Especially as Africans, as Black people, we’ve spent so much time explaining racism, which isn’t something we invented. For example, if you look at James Baldwin’s speeches, he’s constantly explaining racism to white people, and it exhausted him. Then there’s Toni Morrison, who says that explaining is a waste of our time. When someone calls you a monster, you end up spending your life proving that you’re not one. Meanwhile, you already know you’re not a monster, so why not just move forward with people who know that too? That’s what I mean by not wanting to explain.

As a South African, I also have a historical connection to this place, though it’s rarely acknowledged in how contemporary society deals with history. I’m expected to learn Dutch, and I’ll do it, but I have to work through a lot of emotions to even try. And every time I arrive at the airport and show my passport, without fail someone will say, ‘Oh, you speak Afrikaans.’ It happens at hotels, and even on public platforms. It’s frustrating because people often don’t understand why they’re asking that. They think it’s fascinating that there’s a place in Africa where people speak this language, without connecting it to its painful history.

So, I’m learning to let go of these things because I don’t want to be exhausted. I want to move toward joy, to bring people together, to work on meaningful questions, to dance, to laugh and to heal. Explaining keeps us from processing and healing.

And then, when we say we want to heal, there’s often a push for others to take responsibility for that healing too. This is why fugitivity, escape and refusal are important — to keep our questions as our own, to ensure they haven’t been hijacked just to keep the art world comfortable. Sometimes you have to say things that seem absurd, like ‘There’s no post-colonialism,’ which I found myself saying a lot when I worked in Berlin. That’s not my work, and that’s not my job.

SM: But you’re often asked to address these basic topics, right?

GN: Yes, it’s almost expected that if you’re coming from a certain place and appointed to this work, you’ll naturally deal with these questions. But then the expectation is, ‘Why aren’t you handling it yourself? Isn’t this your question, first and foremost?’ Navigating that can be tiring, but we aim toward healing, and that’s a positive thing. We need the resources to do that as well.

SM: It seems like the themes of not knowing, uncertainty, and being in-between have followed you for many years. When you were on the curatorial team at the Biennial of São Paulo, the theme was about life’s uncertainties. And then with the Berlin Biennial, We Don’t Need Another Hero, it felt like you were also exploring how to make space for nuance, complexity, maybe even opacity. Is this something that’s kept you motivated over the last few years?

GN: Yes, that’s true. São Paulo was different, though, because I came there from other places where I’d worked on history, archives and memory, like the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg. I’d studied art, but I didn’t know any artists at the time. It started when they introduced art at my high school as an alternative to math. I didn’t know what art was, but I figured anything would be better than struggling in math, which I was terrible at, maybe because I didn’t have much support or guidance. So, I gave art a try, and we had this incredible teacher. She wasn’t exactly a nice person, but she was amazing — like a towering figure. I thought, ‘Wow, what an inspiring woman!’ Her responses to my work were unlike anything I’d experienced, and I thought, ‘This is it. This is what I want to do with my life.’ I actually hated talking, and I thought art would be something that allowed me to be quiet and just focus on creating.

SM: Sorry to make you talk so much today!

GN: (Laughs) Don’t worry! I didn’t realise I’d end up talking this much in my work either — it’s been quite the change for me! But that’s how I found art. I went to university to study it, learning everything I could, even though my understanding of what being an artist meant was pretty naïve.

SM: And what were your dreams during that time?

GN: To become an artist and get famous — and then go live in Paris. I imagined sitting in my studio, writing letters. But what really mattered to me was the way I became an artist — it felt special, you know? My parents were so confused about what art was, especially since I was the first in my family to go to university. They wondered why I wasn’t studying something that would bring in money, but I insisted. My father called me stubborn, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ I struggled for many years, spending a lot of time on the streets trying to make it.

When my career started to pick up, I began leaning into the curatorial field but never left my artistic practice. It was important to me to identify as both an artist and a curator. It doesn’t mean I’m just sitting in my studio chasing an artist’s dream; it’s about creating freedom within my curatorial work. If something is hard to express in words, I can create it physically and show what I mean. Most curators don’t allow themselves this possibility, to create a prototype that guides the curatorial process. By identifying as an artist, I can explore ideas tangibly and have different kinds of conversations with artists.

In São Paulo, it was challenging to be that kind of person. I was invited by the main curator to work with a team, and when I shared my previous work, they liked it but were sceptical about how I’d manage it again. I realised quickly that if I wasn’t the one suggesting artists from Africa or Black artists, no one else would. So, I went along with that approach, even though it wasn’t truly mine.

São Paulo was also challenging because I didn’t speak Portuguese, which made me feel very vulnerable. But I found my own ways to connect with people, and that’s why Brazil, especially São Paulo, remains deeply connected to my practice. I learned to communicate without words — through karaoke, meeting people on the dance floor and connecting in other ways. Eventually, I’d walk around São Paulo and people would recognise me because they’d seen me at some party or event.

At the same time, thinking about Brazil, it’s strange how it seems that Black people there often don’t have the language to articulate their own lack of freedom, even now. I still find it to be one of the most racist places I’ve been. Every time I arrive at the airport, I think, ‘Okay, here it is again.’