M.O.L 34 - M.O.L 33 ARTBANKSA SOFT POWER: GEOPOLITICS AND ART

M.O.L 33 ARTBANKSA

Ashraf Jamal

SOFT POWER: GEOPOLITICS AND ART

Much has been said on the ‘cultural capital’ of art. Anyone attuned to the artworld is doubtless, like myself, astonished by its seductive power, monetary value, and cultural agency. Art opens doors, emboldens and strengthens diplomatic agreements and economic exchanges. That said, it is not merely an expedient tool in a greater Machiavellian game, but, as Nonto Msomi, the comptroller of ArtBankSA, reminds me, art, or culture more generally, is the engine room of ‘soft power’.

‘The ability to co-opt rather than coerce’, soft power shapes ‘the preferences of others through appeal and attraction’. In Africa, a key player in global art and design – precisely because the powers that be, volatile and ever-shifting, can no longer ignore its stellar presence – Black Portraiture has become a dominant focus in the contemporary artworld. This emergence is symptomatic of the new reach which Africa and its diaspora has thrust centre-stage. Unsurprisingly, Africa’s newfound prominence in the artworld has much to do with its prior disregard and exploitation by colonial powers. That colonialism persists, in other guises, should however remind us that revisionism, in and of itself, cannot solve over 500 years of oppression, exploitation, and, after Walter Rodney, ‘underdevelopment’.

It was against the extractive mechanism of colonialism, now being revised through restitution, that Pan-Africanism – a vision of African for Africans – should emerge. However, a continent cannot be understood hermetically. Hyperconnectivity defines world history. Which is why Steve Bantu Biko, a Pan-Africanist and leader of the Black Consciousness movement, should remind us that Africa would give the world a ‘human face’. This is a canny Afro-Futurist vision of international relations that places a core subSaharan value, Ubuntu, at the epicentre of human empathy and collective understanding – that we are whom we are because of others. Ubuntu, as a cultural value and practice, is an example par excellence of soft power.

Nonto Msomi, together with Nathi Gumede, are currently engaged in precisely such a ministration on behalf of the Department of Sport, Art and Culture (DSAC). As part of the South African ‘Cultural Season’ their role is to exhibit the nation’s art in Tanzania, and, so doing, engender precisely what Biko advocated – a human interface between countries . That Tanzania, under its great leader Julius Nyerere, was committed to socialist principles, supporting the ANC in exile, amongst other liberatory movements – namely, the Pan African Congress (PAC), the Mozambiquan Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Zimbabwean African People’s Union (ZAPU) – clearly demonstrated a commitment, across Africa, towards decolonization. Today, in our relatively democratic era – despite the fact that warlords and demagogues still prevail, and sadly, once again gaining traction worldwide – it behooves those committed to cultural exchange, to hold fast to the best and most inclusive values.

In this regard, art has a profound role to play, precisely when its creative power is more inferential, suggestive rather than declamatory. In Msomi’s curatorial selection, it is the black personage – black being – that is paramount. She is not interested in a substrate of historical pain, but in the easeful self-affirmation which the artists communicate. In Buhle Nkalashe’s colourful portrait, the figure’s direct gaze is an invocation not an assertion, the language of the body consoling, the one hand restfully placed, signaling a life wholly immersed in itself. Given over 500 years of black oppression – the voiding of selfhood, agency, being, soul – it is unsurprising that Black Portraiture should finally have its day. In their Tanzanian offering, Msomi tracks the inner worlds of singular black

Andile Maphumulo, Ngiyasebenza, 2020 Paint on canvas, 60 x 44 cm

Andile Maphumulo, Inkosi yebhodwe, 2020, Paint on canvas 60x44cm Chulumanco Feni, Inkhokheli, 2021, Oil paint, oil pastel and acrylic on brown paper

Stephen Langa, Stay in charge of you, don’t let the outside world control you, 2021, Charcoal, acrylic and pastel on paper 130 x 90 cm

Zakhele Hlabisa, Mama Albert Sisulu, 2020, Paint on canvas, 63 x 80 cm Buhle Nkalashe, Victor, 2021, Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

“If soft power is seductive, it is because it speaks to our deepest intuitions and yearnings.”

beings, instead of types – because, of course, it remains expediently true that the black body is still all too easily, and remorselessly, objectified. In South Africa’s cultural exchange this is not the case. On the contrary, it is Biko’s ‘human face’ that emerges in a consummate expression of soft power.

Lebo Thoka’s ‘Unknown Woman’ is stately, Chulumanco Feni’s ‘Inkhokheli’ is ruefully contemplative, Major Ndlovu’s ode to Sir Zanele Muholi affirms their gender fluid complexity, yet, at the same time, Muholi’s stratospheric global prominence as the ‘Black Madonna’. On the other hand, Zakhele Hlabisa’s ’Mama Albertina Sisulu’, offers us, after Njabulo Ndebele, the ‘ordinary’ – the precise inverse of the ‘spectacle’, or spectacular, which, for Ndebele, fails to grasp the prosaic beauty of black life and culture. This ordinariness is further captured in everyday domestic scenes by Andile Maphumulo, in a bid to remind the world that Black Life need not only be understood in extremis. If soft power is seductive, it is because it speaks to our deepest intuitions and yearnings. The ArtBankSA understands this well. South Africa, after all, remains a vital political player – despite its complex position regarding the Ukrainian / Russian war – most especially on the African continent which remains in search of its greater self. This search is by no means peculiarly African. Right now, the world over, we are witnessing threats to democracy, singular human agency, the rights and rites of the Self. This is the global unconscious expressed by millions the world over. Given this dread and anxiety, all the more do we need art that is consoling, reassuring, affirming, loving. The contribution of DSAC, through ArtBankSA, is a delicate window, and mirror, of our ever-evolving quest for a great state of being.

A RECKONING IN SPRINGS

On November 26th the Springs Art Gallery (SAG) opens an exhibition with the unflinching title – Reckoning. Its focus is 40 ‘emerging artists’, its remit, to inspire, provoke, challenge, and renew South Africa’s vision, blunted by its failure to future-proof the country and support the next generation. Hailing from all the provinces of South Africa, and working in radically diverse media, these artists are not only our potential but our reserve – no society can sustain itself without addressing the needs of its youth, as climate activists the world over are now demonstrating. Their beef is not with art per se – though they are deliberately desecrating famous paintings by the likes of Vermeer and Gustav Klimt – but with the ethical and political unscrupulousness of the artworld, its support by dubious corporations – in the recent case of the desecration of a painting by Klimt, the museum was supported by an Oil company. The point of these activists? That an extractive economy is unsustainable. Emergent artists, however, are not.

Curated by Nonto Msomi, Reckoning is primarily spurred by radical uncertainty regarding our global future, honed by the psychic-emotional-economic challenges posed by Covid, a pandemic by no means over, though its harshest effects may appear to be so. ‘During the pandemic society collectively held onto the hope of the global shutdowns coming to an end’, Msomi remarks. We were ‘looking forward to a world forever changed, with an optimistic outlook of grand reforms that were long overdue but in need of a catalyst to be realised’. Poised between longing and doubt, Msomi captures the gnawing irresolution that prevails – the intuition that optimism is in abeyance, dread the new normal. No matter one’s position regarding the desecration of artworks – the new rage and despair affecting the world’s most seductive object of value, art and the artworld – we cannot refute that ours is a highly volatile and unstable time. Hence the upcoming ArtbankSA exhibition Reckoning. The vectors of the show comprise ‘identity, heritage, the self, and collective contemporary South Africa’, all of which, now, are confronting ‘uncomfortable historic truths’ which many deny – namely, that ideology has come in the way of ethics, that fracture and psychic disfigurement persist, that the majority remain bonded and in chains, the future of the youth devastated. That the ArtbankSA is compelled to address these matters is unsurprising and vital. Who can forget the riots across Natal and Gauteng in July last year? While unrest may have been contained – and there is no certainty in this regard – what cannot be disputed is the rage and despair of the oppressed, dispossessed, poverty-stricken, and hopeless. It is true that -l opportunists exploited a deep-seated grievance, however, my core point concerns the ‘reckoning’ that remains to be addressed. As Msomi reminds us, we must ‘reflect on the decisions made now’, before the day comes when all will have to face an insurmountable societal ‘fracture’.

What, you might ask, does art have to do with it? If the climate activists are correct – then everything. Art is by no means innocent. This is Msomi’s point. The 40 artists, on show in Springs till 24 February 2023, pivot about a core irresolution. Jakie Ntavhanyeni Madide’s ‘Looting Tear’ dramatizes desperation and greed, a society driven by hunger and consumerism, which exposes a destructive systemic inequality between a poor majority and wealthy minority. Jacki Helene Mcinnes’s ‘After the fire: Jagger reading room’, exposes another destruction, both environmental and economic – in fact, as activist unceasingly remind us, it has become impossible to separate the two. Kgaogelo “Cow Mash” Mashilo’s ‘Moo-shomo’, a combine of found art and sculpture, shows a woman on her hands and knees atop an overturned metal basin. Here contrition meets despair, longer meets lack. Cassian Garret Robbertze echoes this despair in ‘Discard’, a figure of an unclothed body snarled in a rictus of agony.

“40 ‘emerging artists’, its remit, to inspire, provoke, challenge, and renew South Africa’s vision, blunted by its failure to future-proof the country and support the next generation.”

Mthobisi Maphumulo, We are not black we are colourful, 2020 Vivien Kohler, All hail, King Tsepo, 2021

Jacki Helene McInnes, After the fire; Jagger reading room, 2021, Mixed media on board, 82 x 90 cm (Detail)

Not all the works Msomi has selected are grave. Niel Louw’s ‘Apprentice’ is nurturing, as is Lindo Zwane’s ‘Ukuzigqaja’, a joyous depiction of a mother and son. But what cannot be disavowed, despite our optimism, is the substrate of pain which is as historical, as geological, as it is psychological.

Ofense Seshabela’s withering mixed media work, ‘Lordz’, sums up the depth of oppressive power. Then again, in a series of portraits by Vivien Kohler (‘All Hail, King Tsepo’), Mthobisi Maphumulo (‘We are not black we are colourful’), Sipho Nkosi (‘Warrior Queen’), Stephen Langa (‘Stay in charge of you, don’t let outside world control you’), or Thembi Mthembu (‘Limitless’), we arrive at the crux of Reckoning, a show which, while pivoting between hope and hopelessness, past error and future correction, nevertheless signals a greater consolatory drive. After all, we need hope, we need our youth. No continent on earth has a greater repository of youth, and if this is an indicator, surely it suggests that a greater future awaits us? This remark may seem rhetorical, but as Nonto Msomi reminds us, we must ‘maintain the courage to ask questions’.

DiVERSiTY DiVERSiTY

F I B R E A R T

iIn collaboration with the South African National Quilt Festival

Group exhibition on show until 29 January 2023, featuring: Zyma Amien, Elaine Barnard, Danielle Clough, Rosalie Dace, Monique Day-Wilde, Tilly de Harde, Willemien de Villiers, Pierre Fouché, Jeanette Gilks, Kathryn Harmer Fox, Jenny Hearn, Fiona Kirkwood, Kimathi Mafafo, Gerda Mohr, Linda Rademan, Paul Schutte, Mandy Shindler, Roy Starke, Hannalie Taute, Diana Vandeyar and Angie Weisswange

Stellentia Road, Stellenbosch | Entrance Complimentary Tues – Fri: 10h00 – 17h00 | Sat – Sun: 10h00 – 16h00 info@rupertmuseum.org | rupertmuseum.org/exhibition/diversity