Jonathan Hindson – Home

Jonathan Hindson, a South African born, French-based artist currently in residence at Gallery MOMO, will be showcasing a body of new works in his exhibition titled ‘Home’. This will be Hindson’s first solo exhibition in South Africa.

For the exhibition Hindson explains that the artworks that he has created “refer to some aspect of a place I could, or would like to, or wish to, call ‘home’ – be it a country, a family or a social context”. Hindson grew up in Johannesburg during the 60s and 70s; he left for France when he was 11 years old. “I came back to visit my family twice, and then after 1980, I didn’t come back to South Africa for another 32 years”. He explains that he sometimes thinks of himself as a “time capsule”.

When he returned to South Africa from France, he was asked whether South Africa had changed: “I would first have to explore what has changed the most: The country or myself?”

“The feeling of belonging is quite strange and unpredictable. Why should one feel at home in a place that has been getting along with its business without even noticing an absence?” Hindson notes that one can only remember something once and from then on, what we remember is the mental image of what has been remembered.

“When I start with a picture, I don’t really know where it will take me. I guess that what I call deconstructing a picture is a process of expecting it to talk back. The final painting is the result of a long, sometimes heated or candid discussion between the picture and me”.

For his show at Gallery MOMO Hindson uses his perception of various situations influenced by memories that define him is a person. “What I call reality is the result of this influence. There can be no such thing as one single truth”. The philosophical influences of Jacques Derrida, specifically his philosophy on Deconstruction, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger play a pivotal role in his decision making when creating. Hindson’s artworks confront us with the question of what we call ‘home’, and if we call it ‘home’, why? The notion of ‘home’ is deconstructed in Hindson’s artworks in such a manner that we are ultimately faced with an ontological instability.

Momo Gallery