In South Africa Activists Campaign to Remove Artwork by
Convicted Murderer of a Sex Worker In a public gesture of solidarity, artist Candice Breitz asked that her video installation, on view in a separate exhibition at the same art center, be removed and replaced by a #SayHerName sign. Nearly three years ago, painter-photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa was found guilty of murder after a long, laborious trial. But the conversation about Mthethwa’s crime was reignited last month when a new Cape Town museum, University of Pretoria’s Javett Art Center, featured the artist in an inaugural exhibition entitled All in a Day’s Eye: The Politics of Innocence. The exhibition, curated by Gabi Ngcobo, was designed, according to the Javett’s website, to “uncover themes ranging from education, culture, architecture, the natural environment, representation, beauty, the land, religion and politics, to name just a few.” Mthethwa, a high-profile South African artist, has since been serving an 18-year prison sentence for beating Nokuphila Kumalo, a 23-year-old sex worker, to a violent death in a suburb of Cape Town. The act was captured on pixelated CCTV footage, which was presented at Mthethwa’s trial — and largely sealed his conviction. According to local reports, many sex workers and advocates were present in the public gallery throughout Mthethwa’s four-year trial; several rose and applauded when the judge delivered her ruling. After Mthethwa’s conviction (though he has maintained his innocence), members of SWEAT (the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce) and other activists urged galleries and museums to pull Mthethwa’s work from their walls. (Spectators in the art world were struck by Mthethwa’s refusal to testify in court and his perceived lack of remorse; he notably has said the entire evening
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has been wiped from his memory.) In 2017, while Mthethwa was still on trial, the Iziko South African National Gallery included one of his untitled photographs (2012) in an exhibition that was ironically titled, Our Lady. “The Wedding Party” marks the first public reappearance of Mthethwa’s work since his 2017 conviction. Some fear that Javett, a newly-opened institution, has tacitly given auction houses, galleries, and museums permission to forget Mthethwa’s dark personal history — and disseminate his work. Once news surfaced of the artist’s presence in Politics of Innocence, SWEAT published an open letter and circulated a petition online, calling for the Javett Art Center to remove Mthethwa’s work, “The Wedding Party,” a 1996 pastel drawing. As of Monday, October 7, the petition has over 900 signatures. “The irony of promoting the work of a man convicted of murdering a woman as part of an exhibition in the backdrop of the gender-based violence and femicide epidemic in South Africa is a complete disregard of the agony and trauma this and all other acts of violence against womxn cause,” SWEAT’s letter reads. “This is in actual fact, a slap in the face of womxn who have been killed by men like Zwelethu Mthethwa, who in turns continue to be celebrated by the supremacist capitalist patriarchal world.” In a public gesture of solidarity, South African artist Candice Breitz asked that her video installation “Profile” (2017) — which was on view at a separate Javett exhibition, 101 Collecting Conversations: Signature Works of a Century — be powered off. “Ngcobo has effectively recuperated the work of Mthethwa for the Javett Foundation and offered a license for others who are invested in his work to bring it back into circulation and speculation … there will surely be a plethora of less well-intended collectors and speculators who will see fit to do the same,” Breitz wrote on Facebook.
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