Mayibuye, and: On the Road (review)
«Evidence is not Truth because the vision can change" wrote the poet and artist, Houria Niati about the search of Algerian women for an identity beyond the exoticizing gaze of the west that would more adequately speak of the complexities of their realities. Re-envisioning the past in a search for the truth beyond the legacy that colonial domination has laid in its wake is an investigation often fraught with contradictions, misinterpretations, and hegemonic cultural imperatives. For South Africans, their recent emergence from the apartheid era has called into question much of the evidence and strategies which have resulted in this myopic vision that has defined South Africa's cultural past and still contends for its future. While much of the fanfare that has accompanied the dismantling of apartheid on the international front has focused on the bridge-building efforts of the transitional government and other similar attempts at integrating South Africa's diverse populations, many of the more difficult questions are still to be addressed. One need only look at the disparaging under-representation of black South African artists at the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale to know that much work has yet to be done before the boundaries that apartheid established can be sufficiently labeled as the past. During the recent africa95 festival in London, two shows, "Mayibuye e Africa" and "On The Road" focused on these disjunctures between Africa's past and the emerging perspectives on its future by interrogating the indeterminancy of both in articulating the shifting boundaries of African representation. The forms these inquiries took varied in their methods and materials yet the variety of artists left something to be desired. Even before entering "Mayibuye" at the Bernard Jacobson gallery one was confronted with the complexities of South African identity through a window installation by Kendell Geers which mimics a demographic study giving a statistical breakdown of the artists in the show according to race and gender categories. The total, which far exceeds the actual number of artists in the show, points out rather ironically the difficulty and in most cases, failure of institutions to present shows that are as inclusive as they purport themselves to be in the selection of artists. It was soon apparent inside the gallery that what has divided these artists historically along racial lines continues to be a major impetus in their work. There are no attempts at resolution here but rather a heightened sense of the consequences of such divisions and the questions that inevitably arise in the search for a way to make sense of past absurdities on tbe way to creating a viable reality for South Africa today. William Kentridge's video installation relying on the same sheet of paper to create and then rub out the images which comprise each scene of his narratives, depicts that past in a perpetual state of willful erasure. They draw on the disintegration of the image on the ability of memory to forget and grow vague somehow allowing us to reinvent these memories by envisioning them anew. Each time, adding something new to the narrative which may have no relation to the original facts other than it occured in the mind of the same individual. Struggling against this amnesia, other artists in the show including Willie Bester and Penny Siopis rely on the discarded refuse of modern life (scrap metal, till cans, and surgical catheters) as building materials and in a sense evidence of the evisceration of traditional life that has led to the present dilemmas. Bester, through the depiction of friends and armed thugs alike amidst the rubble of the past and Siopis through the creation of postcard memorabilia which lacks any of the sentiment that the medium would imply. "On The Road" at the Delfina Studio Trust expanded upon the themes of history and memory evoked in "Mayibuye" by the inclusion of artists from Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe (Keston Beaton, Antonio Ole, Berry Bickle, and Renata Sadimba Passema) in addition to many of the artists featured in the other show (Bester, Siopis, Kentridge, Geers, and Norman Catherine). What emerged was a dialogue between the artists and the conceptual frameworks they utilize to extend their viewpoints to a more generalized application of their themes and concerns comprising a global narrative of cultures in transition. What these histories both private and public have brought to the present is the sense that the search for meaning and identity amidst the debris of a world in the process of dissembling and deconstructing itself is not a localized phenomena. Berry Bickle's charred wooden boats emptied of their cargo weightless and transcendent are recovered as artifacts of a forgotten history now put into service of a new journey. In contrast, Antonio Ole's vessel remains hopelessly landlocked, sunken by the weight of its load of bricks and books, remaining a testament to the devastation of the Angolan civil war. Yet both converge at the same destination, bringing to the dialogue a sense of the absences left by the migration and displacement that has resulted from war, imperialism, exile, and social upheaval. For Keston Beaton and Pat Mautloa, these absences are filled up by materials that have been discarded as useless scrap, resurrected into completely new expressive forms. Developing new strategies for representation and an engaged inquiry into the processes that constitute art making are key to these artists' search for a new way of envisioning experience. Reinvesting the subject with new tools better suited to challenging the conceits of the past and refiguring them to face the unraveling narrative of Africa's present. Despite their intentions, one was left with the feeling that many of the artists in the shows were better equipped to make in-ways into these investigations than the shows themselves.