Personal Affects:
Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art
February 24 - May 7, 2006
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu will host a major exhibition of contemporary visual arts from South Africa in February 2006. Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art features an extraordinary line-up of seventeen artists on the cutting edge of contemporary South African art working in diverse media, including sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, installation and video. Personal Affects was originally exhibited at the Museum for African Art and The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, September 2004 - January 2005, as part of Season South Africa to commemorate South Africa’s first decade of democracy.
Personal Affects showcases newly commissioned and recently produced works by some of the most gifted and acclaimed contemporary visual and performing artists chosen by an international team of curators. Moving beyond the confines of identity politics towards subtler investigations of agency and affect, this exhibition looks at works of art as the powerful and poetic expressions that artists leave behind. Participating artists are Jane Alexander, Wim Botha, Steven Cohen, Churchill Madikida, Mustafa Maluka, Thando Mama, Samson Mudzunga, Jay Pather, Johannes Phokela, Robin Rhode, Claudette Schreuders, Berni Searle, Doreen Southwood, Clive van den Berg, Minnette V‡ri, Diane Victor and Sandile Zulu.
A comprehensive two volume catalogue will accompany the exhibition, and is available for purchase in the museum shop.
In preparation for the installation of Personal Affects, TCM Associate curator Allison Wong conversed via email with co-curators Laurie Ann Farrell and Sophie Perryer about the exhibition:
How have the artists’ work changed or not changed since apartheid?
Since the advent of democracy artists have been liberated from the need to use art as a weapon of the struggle against apartheid. Naturally in the new democracy, with the country attempting to redefine itself, issues of identity – racial in particular but also cultural, gender, class and sexual orientation – came strongly to the fore. However Personal Affects suggests that the artists in this exhibition are moving beyond the confines of identity politics to engage with complex questions of individual agency in the world.
How did the exhibition Personal Affects come about?
The project was initiated in 2003 by Dick Enthoven, a patron of the visual and performing arts in South Africa for many years. Spier, the Enthoven family’s wine estate in Stellensbosch, outside Cape Town, hosts annual summer arts festivals and is home to the lyric theatre company, Dimpho Di Kopane. To coincide with South Africa's decade of democracy celebrations in 2004, Enthoven envisaged a season of performances for Dimpho Di Kopane in New York, in tandem with a visual art exhibition, under the overall title of Season South Africa.
With the advice of Cape Town gallerist and art historian Michael Stevenson, Enthoven suggested that a team of curators be appointed to give form to the exhibition, and to this end David Brodie, then curator of contemporary collections at Johannesburg Art Gallery, and Sophie Perryer, founding editor of Art South Africa magazine, were approached to formulate the initial concept. After a visit to New York in November 2003, and a meeting with Laurie Ann Farrell at the Museum for African Art in New York, it was decided to include her in the curatorial team and establish a formal relationship with the Museum as a partner in the project. Soon afterwards artist/curator Churchill Madikida and academic Liese van der Watt were added to the curatorial team.
Two venues were proposed for the exhibition: the white cube of the Museum for African Art, and the meditative space of the Cathedral of St John the Divine (where the theatre performances would take place) on the border of Harlem on the Upper West Side. The selected artists were flown to New York in February 2004 to conduct site visits and discuss ideas with the curators, and were then given some time to propose works for both spaces. They then returned to the city in September 2004 to install their works. The exhibition opened with spectacular performances at the Museum on September 21, and at the Cathedral two days later.
As seen at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, the exhibition comprises work by each artist selected from either the Cathedral or the Museum.
Are the artists that were selected for the exhibition from major cities or rural areas of South Africa?
The curators sought a mix of artists who were not necessarily recognized within the international realm, nor automatically included on the long list of ‘survey’ exhibitions to emerge from South Africa in the decade following the demise of apartheid and the advent of democracy. Looking for a critical departure point beyond the overworked theme of identity issues, the curators repeatedly found themselves drawn to artists who were investigating notions of performance and ritualized action. The 17 selected come from all parts of the country, although most – with the exception of Mudzunga, who lives in rural Limpopo – are now based in major cities. Cohen, Phokela and Rhode have left South Africa in recent years and are based near Paris and in London and Berlin respectively.
Is there an underlying theme to the exhibition?
A common thread throughout the works, which are in diverse media, is the highly personal point of departure of the artists’ working methods: the use of the body, personal histories, and the construction of personal mythologies. Moving beyond the confines of identity politics towards subtler investigations of agency and affect, the exhibition looks at works of art as the powerful and poetic expressions that artists leave behind – from the ephemeral nature of performance art to more lasting material manifestations. This constant interrogation is what affects our selves: the feelings, emotions, memories and interactions that disrupt our subjectivities recurrently, incessantly. The show examines how these affects are embodied in our personal effects – the objects we choose and create to respond to the world around us. Effects become traces of our affects: they enunciate the power and poetics that characterize our interaction with the restless world through which we move.
What is the contemporary art scene like in South Africa?
The contemporary art scene is increasingly vibrant, with a number of artists receiving significant attention on the international art circuit, and plans for a first Cape-based biennial exhibition to take place in 2006, picking up where the Johannesburg Biennale left off. However, transformation of the country’s visual art institutions is criticized as taking place too slowly, and museums are hampered by insufficient funding in a climate in which government priorities remain at the level of basic amenities.
How does culture and history play within these artists’ work?
The artists have highly individual and complex practices, and the ways in which they engage culture and history are correspondingly varied. For example, Churchill Madikida examines the contemporary validity of traditional Xhosa rituals such as initiation in his work, adopting an ambivalent stance that positions him both within and outside of his own heritage. In his installations Wim Botha reflects on and subverts the symbolic imagery of power, religion and art history, icons that have universal significance but were also specifically used to bolster the ideology of the old regime in South Africa. Berni Searle references a feeding project that takes place during the Muslim festival of Eid in her video projection Vapour, reflecting in complex ways on issues of community, tradition, inheritance and transition. Throughout the artists’ work such large issues as the continuing impact of the past on the present are grounded in the specificities of cultural inheritance and individual experience.
Support
Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art is organized by the Museum for African Art, supported by Spier and previously exhibited at the Museum for African Art and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York as part of Season South Africa. This exhibition is curated by Laurie Ann Farrell, Curator at the Museum for African Art, David Brodie, Churchill Madikida, Sophie Perryer and Liese van der Watt.
The presentation of Personal Affects in Honolulu is organized by TCM Associate Curator Allison Wong, and is made possible by the members and supporters of The Contemporary Museum, and by Spier. Additional support for the exhibition’s educational programming provided by the Reverend Takie Okumura Family Fund. In-kind support has been provided by Horizon Lines, LLC and ResortQuest Hawaii.
