Take a Seat: Daddy's Lap (2012) by Bongani Njalo

Bongani Njalo is a performance artist who celebrates the complicated nature of subjectivity that cannot be suppressed under one singular category. His queerness, artistry, and personal definitions make up a mosaic of his idea of self to be perceived as one whole, not in isolation. His African heritage blooms through the cracks of his childhood and bleeds into his adult life as he appreciates African spirituality and the wisdom with which its principles grant him.

Growing up as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, his effeminate appearance and the way other children treated him engraved his thoughts with the idea of being ‘impure’ or ‘dirty.’ Bongani was hyperaware of his uniqueness because his environment made him aware of it through peer bullying.

Bongani’s tendency for art bloomed when he was in high school, and in 2006 he received an Art & Design education which made him learn about the compound and stratified world of visual arts. 

Bongani refers to his gut-wrenching work Daddy’s Lap (2012) within the themes of vulnerability and fragility. The striking art piece revolves around domestic abuse, which originates from the patriarchal figure of the father and the dooming quality of which his presence reeks.

I do not think the glass pieces’ positioning is arbitrary when considering the work and its visual properties. As can be seen from the image provided above, the glass pieces are located on almost every surface that could be a place to sit down and relax since the object the glasses pierce through is an armchair. The armchair’s inviting quality is juxtaposed with the glass pieces and their ability to cause severe damage. Therefore, one is tempted by the soothing idea of laying down and feeling comfortable on the big and cozy armchair, only to be repulsed away by the knowledge that the glasses obtain the ability to damage.

Bongani parallels his artwork with his own description of a father’s looming and eerie presence. The armchair is the ideal father figure who is to provide a certain emotional availability for the family. However, the glass pieces underline a defect in the father’s parental abilities. The chair, as an idea, becomes distorted and frightening, something to evade from. And as a literal and palpable thing, to be within its perimeters sounds terrifying, and it becomes painful to touch, closely resembling a father figure with abusive inclinations and disruptive behaviors.

Daddy’s Lap (2012) is an impactful work that dwells in the distorted domestic sphere and mirrors the horrifying reality of malfunctioning parents and their generational legacies left behind: their children remembering them as skin-slicing and blood-shedding monstrosities.