Strings attached

At the ICA, a multiplicity of meanings are tethered to South African Nicholas Hlobo's work. But to what effect?

As part of his "Momentum" installation, Nicholas Hlobo dons a headpiece with braided ribbons fanned out to hooks on the wall. (Essdras M. Suarez/Globe Staff)

"I love the conversation of experts," said Edgar Degas. "One understands absolutely nothing, and it's charming!" I felt something similar when briefed by a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art about the metaphoric resonances of Nicholas Hlobo's work. Her voice was hushed because the artist, a South African of Xhosa descent, sat in a corner wearing a headpiece attached via colorful woven fabrics to 17 points on the wall.

Hlobo's work is charming. It has an intricate gorgeousness, a handmade flair and an ability to seduce both from afar and close-up. I wanted to see more of it; but alas, Hlobo's showing - the 11th installment in the ICA's "Momentum" series, which commissions new work from promising young artists - consists of just three works (not counting the aforementioned performance, an aggressively uneventful affair to which I'll return).

It's not enough. Most commercial gallery shows would provide heartier fare than this, and they would do so 10 times a year. The ICA is a major museum with a huge public to serve and an international reputation to consolidate. It needs to be more ambitious. (Revealingly, having provided no catalog of its own, the ICA included in its press material a glossy publication printed by Hlobo's dealer in Cape Town with reproductions of his much more substantial showing there earlier this year.)

Happily, Hlobo himself strikes me as very ambitious. The most prominent work here is a large stomach or womb-shape sculpture suspended from the ceiling, bathed in a delicate pink light. It is made from black rubber, with various valves and nipples attached, and its thick surface is embroidered with meandering lines of colorful ribbon.

Several apertures in this large, hollow organ are partially blocked by folds and flaps. Peering inside, one sees a cavernous interior dotted by hundreds of pinpricks of light (these are created by the needle punctures). A kind of alimentary canal connects the "gut" to a hole in the wall, on the other side of which is an aperture surrounded by a delta of brightly colored, loosely crocheted ribbon and thread.

The work's Xhosa title, "Umphanda ongazaliyo," means "a vessel that never fills up," and one could, if inclined, find various bodily metaphors at play. Certainly, the ICA curators are so disposed: "Hlobo explores universal metaphors of nourishment and strength, both mental and physical," they tell us, and plenty more in a similar vein.

In truth, however, Hlobo (still in his early 30s) does not really "explore" these metaphors, nor does he put much effort into giving them formal articulation. He just serves the work up and invites the merchants of "meaning" to do their thing.

The work is better off without them. It beautifully commands the space it so improbably occupies, and, without any suggestion of fussiness, trusts you to want to spend time in its presence.

Hlobo's two works on paper, each occupying its own wall in the same room, are prettier, but no less compelling. On 10-foot-long unframed sheets of rippling paper, the artist has stitched colorful lines that traverse the paper's white surface with about as much logic as a party of inebriated snails. The stitched ribbon in one work has a cool and simple palette - blue, black, and purple - while the other has a bright and antic feel, combining yellow, green, red, black, blue, and pink.

Again, these works, commanding from afar, also draw you in close, whereupon you see intriguing details such as patches of crocheted ribbon that protrude from the surface, or holes where the stitching has been inexplicably removed. The bottom section of one, called "Iminxeba," has been torn away and, at the torn edge, spliced together with raggedy pieces of soft leather.

The work's metaphorical associations are explained in the following terms (I quote from the wall label): " 'Iminxeba' means 'limbs of the vine' but also refers to the 'grapevine' of telephone networks or the phone itself, whose now wireless signals traverse the world in complex invisible patterns. Hlobo's sprawling stitches suggest lines of communication, both clear and crossed, that extend to the farthest reaches."

Farther on, the wall text notes that the rubber spliced into the paper has been "cut to resemble an ear or ear drum." But what, pray tell, does an ear drum look like? And isn't it very different from an ear, which, by the way, the rubber hardly resembles in the first place?

This stuff reads to me like a parody of art speak. None of it is articulated in the work. And even if it were, how valuable, in terms of insight, would it be? Is anyone's understanding of the world improved or even changed by such abstract and arbitrary waffle?

Hlobo's performance on Tuesday night was a grave, in some ways beautiful affair that nonetheless went on too long and took itself far too seriously. The artist entered the space dressed in a handsome black outfit with a long pleated skirt and white trimming around the neckline. (This and the other props he made himself.) He donned a brightly colored headpiece, from which long braided ribbons fanned out to hooks on the wall, and he sat himself on a beautiful circular "nest" made from African reed the color of lichen.

For the best part of an hour he stayed there. Every few minutes he would shift in his seat, flick imaginary dust from his coat or resettle the headpiece, like a proud monarch patiently awaiting the arrival of roguish relatives. When he had had enough, he stood up, detached himself from his various umbilical cords, stretched ostentatiously, and slowly walked out.

Overall, the sense of gravity and formality was impressive. But the fact that so little actually happened lent the ritual an irritating, passive-aggressive quality sadly characteristic of so much performance art.

Hlobo's work is heavily inspired by Xhosa culture, especially its colors and language. But with his theatrical flair for dress and colorful ornament, and his inventive treatment of soft, craft-oriented materials, his work also zips together divergent Western trends epitomized by the late performance artist Leigh Bowery and the minimalist Eva Hesse. Its ad-hoc, crafty quality exists in sweet counterpoint to the immaculate sheen and formal symmetry of the stunning Anish Kapoor show on the same floor.

And yet the show remains a disappointingly slim affair, scarcely a compelling pretext to visit the ICA on its own. It's a shame, especially since one feels it could so easily have amounted to more. Maybe the ICA needs to look again at the concept behind its "Momentum" series, and find a way to transform these shows into something more substantial.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.