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- Convenor:
-
Michael Godby
(University of Cape Town)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Arts and Culture
- Location:
- Chrystal McMillan, Seminar Room 1
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The visual arts in South Africa have tracked the profound changes in postcolonial society, particularly since the Fallist movement of 2016. This panel explores the formal strategies devised by artists to convey the revolutionary nature of these changes in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent
Long Abstract:
This panel takes as read that there have been, and continue to be, massive changes in the postcolonial landscape throughout Africa. All papers on this panel will illustrate examples of the transformation of institutions that govern public life - political, social, cultural, etc. - that has occurred as a consequence of, or in tandem with political liberation. However, the point of the panel is not simply to narrate these changes but, rather, to identify the strategies used by visual artists to represent the idea of transformation within them. In an extreme case, iconoclasm was deployed on University campuses, and elsewhere in South Africa, to mark the replacement of - or the desire to replace - one social order by another. But South African visual artists have devised more formal means to convey the idea of revolution in society generally, and within their own discipline. The panel invites papers that explore strategies of disruption in the different Fine Arts media, and in the art of curating, in contemporary South African art.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Guy Tillim's image of the African city in 'Avenue Patrice Lumumba'(2007)and 'Museum of the Revolution' (2017) captures the layers of colonialism, subsequent economic stagnation and, in the later book, the triumph of global capitalism. But the new essay also asserts human agency and ownership.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers two recent essays by the South African photographer, Guy Tillim, on the present state of cities in Africa.
'Avenue Patrice Lumumba'(2007) documents the "strange and beautiful hybrid landscape" of African cities - the "empty shell" of the colonial inheritance, the dream of Lumumba's socialist nationalism, and the death of this dream. Tillim writes that in the frailty of this landscape there is an indisputably African identity - but it has to be said that this vision is extraordinarily bleak: the buildings are not only degraded but, for the most part, void of human life. And, formally, the blackish colour palette renders the buildings both dirty and grim while their repeated heavy horizontals and verticals create the impression of virtual incarceration.
Ten years later, Tillim's 'Museum of the Revolution' (2017) deals with the postcolonial African city in a rather different way. Tillim proposes that the streets of the postcolonial African cities themselves constitute a museum, witnessing and, in a sense, documenting socio-political change through the generations. As with 'Avenue Patrice Lumumba', these streets exhibit, in their architecture and in their design, the historical layers of colonial domination, economic stagnation that generally followed independence and, currently, the triumph of global capitalism. But, in absolute contrast to 'Avenue Patrice Lumumba', 'Museum of the Revolution' shows people occupying these urban spaces; and crucially, by incorporating different points of view in diptych and triptych formats, Tillim creates a sense of movement and vitality that assert agency and ownership.
Paper short abstract:
Prick-pride, the summit of male insurgency against women and populace has been used as a countervail against authority figures (especially the former South African president) by South African artists, black and white. To what effect?
Paper long abstract:
A shadow state, subject of a judicial enquiry into State Capture, was built in South Africa during the Zuma era. This paper details artistic strategies of disruption to disparage this rent-seeking state, by exposing figures of authority to ridicule. The state seeks to cauterise dissent, through censorship or punitive measures, and artists take refuge behind lambent strategies.
The paper offers examples of insurgency - among them The Spear by Murray (2012), and Umshini Wam by Mabulu (2012).
In Murray's case, the artist portrayed the South African president in a Lenin-like pose with his penis exposed. For his part, Mabulu showed the president in traditional Zulu attire with his penis clearly visible.
Both these works engendered furious, racially atomised reactions.
The first part of this paper summarises just how far the shadow state succeeded in capturing the treasury, the South African Revenue Service and SOE's. The authors of a recent book, Betrayal of the Promise details astonishing examples of the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state, a relationship that delivers "a political project that enriches the few, subverts South Africa's democratic and constitutional system, weakens state institutions and expatriates capital overseas."
The second, and principal part of the paper concerns itself with an assessment of the efficacy of these artist's utilisation of masculine ridicule as an effective strategy of disruption in bringing about a new social order.
Do these actions represent the efficacy of these artistic re-orderings, or have they been contained by counter push-backs?
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores strategies of disruption and decolonisation within the art of curating. I argue that the ambivalent situation curators of art from South Africa find themselves in is a result of a situation where the often white curators are expected to represent something authentic African.
Paper long abstract:
By studying public demands for recognition, seen in curatorial debates and practices in museums and art galleries exhibiting art from South Africa, this paper explores strategies of disruption and decolonisation within the art of curating. The paper examines how curators are classifying and exhibiting art from South Africa and shows that the public demands for recognition and the ways they are met, are results of a continuous domination of Eurocentric classification and exhibitionary practices. The curatorial debates in South Africa often evolves around the issue of race as white South Africans still make up the majority of curators in many museums and art galleries. The curators themselves thus often become symbols of the Eurocentrism of the institutions they represent, but are simultaneously expected to actively contribute to the transformation of their institutions. The ways in which the curators choose to navigate through the often demanding demands of recognition they are met with, is the empirical foundation of this paper: I argue that the ambivalent situation the curators find themselves in is a result of a situation where white curators are expected to - but at the same time not found suitable to - represent and exhibit something authentic African. The mimicking situation is thus turned upside down: While curators in South Africa before the end of Apartheid could mimic European or Western curatorial practices without much disruption, they are now, through increasing demands for recognition, expected to transform, mimic and incorporate what is considered authentic African.