Sven Christian [SC]: When did you start thinking about your interests in ecology and art as being intertwined?

Io Makandal [IM]: Both of those aspects have always been a part of my life. I grew up surrounded by nature. My parents were creative people, and I was exposed to art in my dad’s studio. I was born in Johannesburg, but we lived on the outskirts of Pretoria for a long time, so I had access to open space — mud and grass. My sisters and I made a huge mud pit, which we played and bathed in, and my mother tolerated that, which is great. Ecology has always informed what I make, but I only brought it into my practice in a more direct way recently, in the last four or five years. I have started to work with plants, effective micro-organisms, fungi, and soil – using that as my material, as opposed to treating the environment as subject matter. When I started out, I worked a lot with the binary between the organic and artificial. I used a lot of plastic and would combine those materials to create immersive installations and three-dimensional drawings, which I called ‘tactile drawings,’ because they read as drawings in three-dimensional space. I also used a lot of other artificial materials. I have always been concerned with waste and what we leave behind. I would often use waste, but I still felt like I was producing waste, because I started to go out and find certain objects or plastics, which I would then purchase to include in my installations. Afterwards I would ask, ‘What do I do with this now?’ That became an issue for me. I became more conscious of the waste that my practice was producing. I’ve also always been interested in the ephemeral; that what I make might disappear and become something else, that it’s not static. So I started working more directly with what was around and what can continue the cycle of transformation.

SC: How much of that awareness came from your Masters research?

IM: It was very much parallel. That research led me to work more intimately with those materials, because I was thinking about soils, plants, and urban ecologies. When it comes to the sculptural — those physical elements in the installation — I wanted to work with things that were going to disappear. So, the masters catalysed that moment. I was afforded space to make that kind of work. Prior to enrolling, I was very much in the commercial art system – producing work for galleries and commercial consumption (that’s why the drawings were more predominant). I would always include an installation in my shows, but for the Master’s there was none of that pressure. That was incredible for the growth of my work. It opened a whole other way of working that led to a more project-based practice.

SC: What was the focus of that research, in a nutshell?

IM: I was looking at particular sites in Johannesburg — the relationship between the built environments that we create and the natural worlds that exist in relation to that; those in-between, liminal, green spaces, defined by Gilles Clément as ‘third landscapes.’ I worked with that term and thought about his idea of defining such a space in the context of South Africa, specifically Johannesburg. It got me thinking about the city itself as a third landscape. That led me to research the Jukskei River and its riparian zone, which was abandoned for a long time. A riparian zone is the vegetation and embankments of a river. It includes the animal habitats and plants alongside the river. It’s a threshold that shouldn’t be encroached on. With a lot of our rivers in the built environment, that zone doesn’t really exist.

In Lorentzville, a suburb of Johannesburg, where the daylight point of the Jukskei river is, there is an artificial culvert that channels the river. Alongside that there is this artificial riparian zone, of approximately five metres wide on one side and three metres on the other. For a long time that was ‘left-over’ servitude space. That defines the third landscape — that it’s this ‘surplus,’ supposedly abandoned space. Within that, there is a lot happening — the ecology is adapting to a human environment. In my research I was trying to think from the position of a plant, because I was interested in a specific species, the Amaranth, which grows a lot in those spaces. It’s often considered a volunteer crop or opportunistic plant. It’s edible and one of the main sources of morogo, an umbrella term for any edible, leafy plant. Morogo is often associated to Amaranth. In isiZulu it is called imifino. Amaranth pops up a lot in these sites. I was looking at how that plant performs in the third landscape, which I define as an ‘opportunistic plant-scape’ in the city, where these plants make home. They entice humans into that space and into relationship with them and those facund spaces. The soils by the Jukskei daylight point are very degraded. One reason is that the river itself isn’t connected to its banks, so its immune system is detached — they cannot feed off or help each other. Both the soil and the river are not well. The rivers need to be connected to their embankments and vice versa for a healthy eco-system to exist. Despite that, life still thrives. I guess that’s where my thinking goes: to what extent do we detach ourselves from natural processes and allow nature to do what it needs to do in order for us to thrive? That’s where this idea of healing comes in for me — I am interested in the transformative process, whether for good or for bad. A term like healing implies a desire for things to be better. That’s not necessarily it, for me. My focus is more on change, in one way or another, and if there are positive benefits, environmentally and ecologically, that’s great!

SC: You engage directly with your materials. It’s a messy process, and I’m interested in the place of touch or embodied knowledge in your work?

IM: I think I’m becoming more comfortable with having an embodied experience in my practice. Initially I was a bit self-conscious about how I position my work in relation to my body. There’s a desire to decentralise me and the human, even me as an artist. I’d rather the other collaborators that I work with — the plants, soil, effective microorganisms — are more visible. I have always been cautious of how the self might overshadow these other collaborators, but I realise that I am a part of it, and that I am very much in it, as a trace. I can’t avoid that.

SC: Maybe now is a good time to chat about your carpet works, like This too shall pass (2023), which is currently being shown as part of Soil Conversations at Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG)?

IM: It’s a work that I’ve been recreating in various situations, so there are different iterations of it. The iteration at JAG is the fourth. The work is about the traces that we will leave behind and how nature ultimately digests culture. In the previous iteration (iteration #3), which was shown as part of Soil Conversations in Berlin, at Koernerpark Galeri, the grass grew through and with the carpet over three months. It was a unique opportunity for that work to grow in the gallery over that length of time. In iteration #4 (2023) at JAG, the carpet is in a later phase of the digestive process — its fibres are brittle and breaking down; the termites and fungi have eaten away at it. It’s at a point of decay, and will soon disappear back into the soil.

SC: How does that process begin, for you — the intervention? You get a carpet, and then. . .?

IM: Yes, first I find a carpet. People are often horrified because the carpets are beautiful objects in their own right; they’re artefacts of our making. At this point I want to work with carpets that are made from natural fibres — mostly woolen and Persian carpets. I collect these from anyone who has one to offer. I also often work with Tamsyn Botha, who has a material library setup in Brixton. She has pre-existing relationships with reclaimers in Joburg, who often find such carpets thrown out on the street. There are a few such carpets lined-up in in the back alley of my house.

SC: How do you treat them?

IM: I’ll lay the carpets out and put effective-microbes on them. I’ll then add pete and soil that I make and mix in the grass seeds that are indigenous to the Soweto highveld biome and wait for it to grow outside. I aid the process by watering the carpets to keep them moist during the germination phase. The first time I did this piece, I started outside. Once the grasses had grown, I brought it into the gallery, and left it to process there. With the Berlin iteration of Soil Conversations, the piece was completely grown and produced inside the gallery, in an artificial environment. It was displayed near the entrance, so there was fresh air coming in over the carpet. It worked really well because of the fresh air. There was also good natural light, and the season was right (Spring/Summer). The work at JAG started out in the same way as the previous iterations. After treating it I rolled it up and left it in the alleyway. From there, the environment and weather influence what grows on it, termites and fungus included.

SC: Can you talk about your choice of carpets, specifically, as opposed to canvas or some other material?

IM: I like that it’s an artisanal object that has aesthetic and cultural value. So they perform a different function in our society.

SC: What’s the general lifespan of such work?

IM: Not very long, in terms of the lifespan one would expect from an artwork. I play with the process of growing and decay a bit — it can go very quickly if I let it. The carpets that I currently have rolled up are almost completely disintegrated. If I were to add them to my compost — my generating soil plant — they would disappear in two weeks maximum.

SC: I guess documentation becomes key?

IM: Yes, documentation is important. Every now and then I document it at different stages of its process, from its growth to its decay.

SC: The sculptures sitting on the table downstairs at the Villa-Legodi Centre are also connected to the other works on show at JAG. . .

IM: Those are adjacent explorations. For those I have used clay to capture an impression of the architectural surface of a particular place. The slabs of clay are the substrate from which to make an imprint of a place as a kind of record. With those works I was looking at the architecture of the space, the built environment and creating a profile of that place. I’ll create a slab of clay, which I will then throw onto the building to get an imprint of the surface. It’s a new method that I am exploring. I could easily place it gently on the section that I am trying to make an imprint of and push it in, but I don’t want too much of my hand impressions on it; I want it to be this impact imprint that gets transferred. The throwing allows for that. In the throwing, the slab also reshapes itself into something interesting to work with further.

I like playing with the forms, that, in itself are an architecture. Through that I make clay vessels or pots that I can then plant or put soils into. The soils that are put in at various times will be different; either soil that I’ve generated or soil from a particular site. I then observe what emerges out of it. I treat these as a kind of archive or profile portrait of the sites where the soil or impressions have been made or taken from.

SC: What do you mean by ‘soil that you generated’?

IM: Compost, basically. I call it generated soil because I create it, I am physical “making soil” with organic debris, bokashi composting technologies and all the creatures that are part of the pedogenesis make the soil— it’s not just dug up from somewhere and placed. Everything that I add to it — organic debris, fungi — is being made. The compost heap with all its creatures inside it process all of the material I put in to become really rich, nourishing soil. That is importante about the soil generation or composting as a methodology: it’s not barren, dead soil. It is minerally, micronutrient rich, and contains a lot of beneficial bacteria and micro-organisms that is needed to stimulate growth. That’s what makes compost different to other soils. It’s medicinal.

SC: Again, there’s this temporal dimension, some of which you can control. You can speed up the metabolic process. At the same time, there’s something interesting about the temporal quality of the imprints that you’re making, or how this temporal aspect shifts when thinking about the more static or gradual processes of transformation that the built environment undergoes.

IM: Agreed. Nothing is inert. The architecture is changing, just at a slower pace. I like the idea of the imprints in themselves changing and being weathered as raw unfired clay. There is a point where I can decide when to fire the clay and at that point hold it in a form in perpetuity. I like to play with that aspect of time, accelerating a process or slowing it down. Thinking about different time-scales, like deep time verses the next few months and what remnants are from then and the now and what are we going to have remain in the future?

SC: Did you fire the imprint works that are on show at JAG?

IM: No. That is something that I am grappling with right now. At what point do I decide to fire them, to hold them in that state? Once you fire it, it sets. Fired objects hold their form and it’s difficult to change that. If it’s raw, even if its dry, it will weather and change. The one at JAG is raw, and I will keep it that way for now. When I take it out of the JAG three months down the line, I will continue to work with it until I decide to fix it, to become a holding vessel. The work that is here, at the Centre, will be fired – simply because I like it. It’s beautiful and I want to keep it.

SC: I am also thinking about the Bokashi mudballs that you’re making in residence — these slow-release mechanisms that also function as containing vessels. They have clay in them, but are not fired, so will degrade with time. They’re meant to hold just long enough to be able to slowly release EM ( Effective Microorganisms) into the waterways. Their form changes, but the intent is for such change to also enable change within the context that they’re released into.

IM: Yes, precisely. With the pots that are made from architectural imprints, I have to ask myself whether I let them disintegrate and be durational or do I fix them, but I want the Bokashi mudballs to disappear gradually and become a part of the ecosystem. I could find a way to fire those vessels, because unglazed clay would still be porous — it would still allow the microorganisms to seep into the waterways — but then the vessel will hold its form and won’t dissolve, and I don’t want that.

SC: And it’s not necessary for them to hold. . .

IM: No, they don’t need little jackets at all. The idea of an artistic gesture disappearing and leaving little trace, for culture to be digested and processed by nature is significant to me.

SC: Do you want to provide some context to the mudballs, because it wasn’t your intent to make these when you arrived. . .

IM: Before coming to NIROX I was thinking about grasses — I’ve worked with grasses endemic to Gauteng in previous projects, like Listening Garden at the Jukskei river daylight point — and developing a series around grasses; creating ceramics to hold the grasses and making steelwork of the grasses. That was my intent for the residency — to work with the grasslands here at NIROX. However, because EM is a technology that I know, have access to, and have been working with for some time (for example, in the work that I am doing around the Jukskei River), when I arrived and noticed the contamination of the waterways with sewage from the Percy Stewart plant, it really affected me and I had to respond to it. I couldn’t ignore the situation, considering that I had this knowledge and technology of EM to work with. The situation presented itself, to demonstrate how the water ecology can change and how one can respond through a non-invasive, environmental intervention; that is, not a chemical artificial intervention but an intervention that collaborates with the ecosystem. When it comes to working with natural waterways, it’s important not to blast them with chlorine, but rather work together with the natural ecology that is already there as a collaborative entity; a participant in the making of the gesture. Effective microorganisms, in liquid form, can be applied to any environment. You can ingest it, put it in water for human and animal consumption, or water your plants with it. It can also be used directly in soil. It very effective stuff and is my most prized collaborator at the moment.

SC: I’m worried about jumping, but I do want to ask about the red, grass-cutter pieces — the sculptural works you’re making now. When I first saw them, they looked like little knots. I hadn’t made the association yet. Although they’re also there in your paintings. That is also a kind of relational thing: this alien form in a landscape, even when you are painting them on this flat wood – there is that jar between the colour and the thing.

IM: Yes, it sits on top – it is not a part of it.

SC: ‘Osmosis’ is the word that springs to mind, or the lack thereof. But it’s a term that seems applicable throughout much of your work: these things that bleed into one another or that leave an impression. You setup boundaries between things, for example, with the Jukskei River, how the soil is not connecting to the water, which results in this ecological breakdown; or how you might intervene in the metabolic processes of fungus on carpet, or work to digest bad bacteria from our waterways.

IM: Precisely. I guess those red remnants are the leftovers of a process that is happening in those landscapes. For me, that is a whole other conversation, about contemporary society’s need to control and condition landscapes for an aesthetic and ‘purposeful’ aim. That object is often found in the landscape. It’s a remnant of that manicuring and conditioning process. I find it a very provocative and violent thing to encounter. I’ve been collecting them for the longest time, and can’t believe that they are so abundant.

SC: It’s weird how hypersensitive you are to them, or more, how I never really notice them, most likely because I’m not looking. Now that I know about them, I’ll likely start seeing them everywhere too.

IM: Yes, once you become aware of something it started appearing all over the place. It started when I was thinking about the conditioning of nature and the construction of landscape – I would walk my dogs at Emmerentia Dam and I started to see them lying around and, like you said, they pop out: they sit on the surface, they are these intrutions in the space — these bright red things. The blades get ripped-off in the process of cutting and are discarded before being replaced. I have also found some that have not been used. Ever since, I notice them everywhere. Now I have thousands of them and the collection is growing in my studio waiting to be made into something. I still want to use the objects themselves, as things, for a series of work, because they are in themselves quite curious and are provocative in themselves: when you look at them initially you’re not sure what they are and where they come from. As you pointed it out, the actually look like sweets, like liquorice.

SC: How does that translate in your paintings? Now you’re working with them in a three-dimensional form, recreating them in clay, but you’re also translating that in a two-dimensional scape. There, it’s the juxtaposing colours that communicate.

IM: Yes, that’s where I started. Drawing and painting are my first modes of working. I’ve been painting abstracted/fragmented landscapes / mindscapes or spaces since the beginning. The abstracted landscapes on the fragmented pieces of paper became the substrate on which to insert these red blades as an additional layer. They become a jarring moment in the painting and yes it’s the juxtaposition that offsets the senses. It’s a confrontation with this matter, like I said they are a signifier of something quite violent, of the cutting of grass that speaks to these aesthetic ideals that are founded in Western ideals of civilizing strategies.

SC: At present your palette is quite earthy, so the red does jar. It sits on top.

IM: I’ve been trying to distill my palette. When I started working as an artist, I was working with these really bright plastics, very artificial things. I really love colour, and my earlier paintings were very bright, or there was a lot of contrast between these muted tones and a bright pop that were linked to a binary between artifice and the natural. Now I’m working more consciously with an earthy palette, because I am interested in drawing with natural pigments. I suppose, in some ways, there is a risk of becoming didactic with that and simplifying it too much.

SC: Not necessarily. In this context it makes sense, because you want the red to pop, so you set that relationship up. But there are other paintings where the abstractive process is a moving into — for example, those that stem from microscopic images of bacteria and soil. This seeing into something, beneath the surface, to the point of them becoming abstracted once more.

IM: There’s also this pattern recognition in that abstraction — the cells of the plant or human body mimic what I call ‘agri-scars.’ The patterns of cells are like aerial views of the landscape. They all mimic each other. That is an interesting development. I don’t know if you’re aware of the term in agriculture, to fallow the land? You leave a space for a duration of time to supposedly recover and then the following year you can plant crops again. In many ways, it’s a contradiction, because it doesn’t really have enough time to significantly recover. At least not in industrial agricultural practices.

SC: Only enough to produce the next crop. . .

IM: Yes, even then though, fertilizers are heavily relied on because the soils are so depleted of their natural cycles of generating the complex micronutrunts and matter in the soil for healthy growth. Thinking about third landscapes and lands that are left to generate in their own ways — about contemporary agricultural practices and what they actually do; how they deplete soils. . . That’s an increasingly big concern. We are destroying top soils at an exponential rate. Fallowing is meant to reduce and mitigate these effects, but like I said, it’s almost a fallacy, because it’s not being honoured and given enough time. This is the condition of being human and functioning in an economy of supply and demand. Things happen at a rapid pace, and we keep accelerating. The fallout of big industry has a very immediate, long-term impact, whereas repair and recovery is a very gradual process. It works on a different time-scale. Again, it’s about slowing down to be able to generate a possible future. That’s where those paintings are going. They need to become a body of work, and the other abstracted landscapes are a tangent in conversation with that.

SC: I also like that aspect of the carpet works, because they’re manufactured objects, right?

IM: Yes, their production is industrial but also artisanal. Even when they’re handmade, there’s a certain pace, the factory line, versus the process of growth, which is less predictable. That’s another aspect of my work that I like to play with — the uncertainty of experimentation; not being sure what will happen. We are just there to be a part of it.

SC: Or to observe it happening, in the context of an exhibition, because it’s not the kind of stuff — with our attention capacity, especially in the arts — that people are used to. The speed of consumption within a gallery or museum setting can be equally fast paced.

IM: Yes, it’s always about the elevator pitch, that instant ‘wow.’ There is a move away from that, for me — you’ve got to give the attention of your time, to gradually observe this thing over a lengthly duration, to really digest what you’re looking at.

SC: It reminds me of Walter’s [Oltmann] current exhibition, and the book we’re busy with, particularly his works with silverfish and cockroaches or things play a transformative role, but which we generally try to get rid of. It’s the same with mould. For example, you pick up a piece of bread or cheese and if it’s mouldy, the first thing one does is cut the mould off. There’s this obsession with sanitation.

IM: Agreed. One tries to eliminate that process of decay, of matter being processed, because what else are you going to do with that piece of cheese if you’re not going to eat it? Something has got to eat it. Like you said, such creatures perform a function, and we have the habit of trying to manipulate that or suspend it.

SC: It’s a stretch, but I’m thinking about our conversation about mortality…

IM: I think the idea of death and dying — entropy, and the transfer of matter — is embedded in my thinking. Matter becomes another kind of matter, it is never lost or gone, just transformed and that’s where a lot of my interest in compost (as agent) comes from. Thinking about mortality on a personal level, I guess it was sparked by my sister getting sick and becoming aware of the fragility of the body — what it can and can’t do. . .

It’s important, in some cases, not to leave a trace, or at least personally. I don’t want to leave a trace. Even though, as an artist, I leave many traces behind. However, I do think about how I want to be composted and eaten by mushrooms and just become soil. I don’t want to be encased in a highly toxic coffin. I’m happy to be wrapped in canvas and put in the ground. I think about what my body is going to become and what it is host to, often. In essence all matter, ourselves included are all particulate arranged into different confuguartions. My body shares the same minerals, water and microbacteria as soil.