MICHAELIS GRADUATE EXHIBITION 2016 by Michaelis School of Fine Art

MICHAELIS GRADUATE EXHIBITION

2016

Published by: Michaelis School of Fine Art University of Cape Town All works ÂŠ The artists and contributors 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing by the artists, authors or the University of Cape Town. Michaelis School of Fine Art University of Cape Town 31-37 Orange Street Gardens 8001 www.michaelis.uct.ac.za

Michaelis School of Fine Art

GRADUATE EXHIBITION 2016 Catalogue

CONTENTS 9 Preface - Fritha Langerman 11 Knowing How To Swim Does not Make you Drown Proof - Nkule Mabaso 13 Student Work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 14 18 22 26 30 34 38 42 46 50 54 58 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 90 94 98 102 106 110 114 118

Abraham, Cathy Ahjum, M.W. Ann, Ceil Bassin, Carli Berens, Georgina Botha, Olivia Buys, Fanie Calder, Leighton Chandler, Christopher James Chimwaza, Chiedza Ciani, Caterina Critchfield, Kayla Dada, Khanyisa Davis, Greta Foulis, Isabella Green, Tegan Holdengarde, Jessica-Anne Howard-Tripp, Stephen Jacobs, Laylaa Jansen Van Rensburg, Lindi Kaczmarek, Alexandra Kim, Ju Eun Law, Marianne Thesen Lee, Kyu Maharaj, Sinead Martinson, Charlie Matlhape, Mathlongonolo

122 126 130 134 138 142 146 150 154 158 162 166 170 174 178 182 186 190 194 198 202 206 210 214 218 222

Millward, Saara Mitchell, Kym Moonsamy, Shadai Moosa, Mariam Mulenga, Aaron MĂźller, Stephani Nkoana, Elizabeth Ntlonti, Asemahle Oelofse, Alex Othusitse, Mosinyiemang Reusch, Lara Robson, Lucy Rodrigues, Tiago Roos, Nicola Sanson, Gabrielle Serraf, Micha Stanley, Joshua Stanwix, Benjamin Strauss, Jase Tlabela, Katlego Van Der Merwe, Gabrielle Van Der Merwe, Henriette & Robin, Nicola Wigdorowitz, Evan Wilkinson, Geena Zimmermann, Sarah Zwelendaba, Xhanti

227 Contact Index 231 Acknowledgements

PREFACE

2016 was extraordinary on many fronts. It was the hottest year on record, with the global average being 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Insanity seemed to descend on the international arena, with North Korea reportedly conducting its biggest nuclear test ever, Britain’s exit from the European Union, the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA, and an increased number of terror attacks throughout the world – all actions pointing to amplified conservatism, xenophobia and violence. In South Africa there were a number of commemorations of moments in apartheid history: the 40th anniversary of the 1976 student uprisings, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of District 6 as a white area under the Group Areas Act, and the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the Urban Areas Act. Within the context of these markers of oppression and dispossession, students continued in 2016 to draw attention to the legacy of apartheid, to inequality, to access to free education and to the lack of transformation at universities. 2016 proved to be even more difficult than the previous year at UCT. Not only was the University entering a period of ‘austerity ’ with considerable cuts in staff, but student protest was even more intense and wide-ranging than 2015. In February, dissatisfaction with the lack of student accommodation precipitated events in which university property was destroyed, including paintings from the university collection, and some by Michaelis graduates. By September it became clear that there were still many unresolved issues and the university came to a complete standstill. The Hiddingh campus was closed for seven weeks while students discussed extensive issues and brought their concerns to public forums. The rethinking of these issues which range from sexual harassment policy to increased funding, discrimination and alienation, will reshape our campus in the years to come. Most studiowork examinations were postponed until 2017, although half the graduating students submitted in December. I thus write this preface in my capacity as 2016 Director of the school, although Berni Searle has now taken on this role, and I take this opportunity to wish her well for the future.

Fritha Langerman

Every year finalist students fundraise furiously for their printed graduate exhibition catalogue and the opening night function. It was agreed by the class of 2016 that, under the circumstances, a lavishly printed catalogue would not be appropriate, instead a large percentage of the generated funds were used to support students completing the deferred exam cycle. This action is to be commended, and will be further echoed by a donation from the group towards material scholarships for students at the school. In June 2016, the Iziko South African National Gallery mounted The Art of Disruptions, an exhibition that presented resonances and reminders of the troubled history of this country within the production of postapartheid artists, and included the work of many of our past students. This impetus can also be witnessed in the work of the 2016 graduates. If there is one central set of concerns it is perhaps that of memorials, systems and systems disrupted. Fields stand untillable as cement spades and scythes are bred by the soil; cast cement personal effects become the gridded teeth of an ordered graveyard; religious systems are formally reshaped by materials – carved in soap, stitched in hessian and cast in refrigerated candy; personal memorials are shaped in steel, in dung, in slumped clay, in the icons of the 1980s and in the deep quotidian sadness of soap remnants and exhausted tubes of cream; the lush green of suburban hedges become charred relief panels; and systems of translation are stuck in a cyclical babble. This is art of the moment. Whether conscious or not, work on this exhibition signals unease and a shift in awareness, thereby demonstrating what it means to be an emerging artist in Africa now. Congratulations to the graduates of 2016, who will join those many Michaelis alumni who make significant contributions in a range of ways to the contemporary art world. May you all continue to do what you love to do every day. Fritha Langerman Director, Michaelis School of Fine Art 2016

KNOWING HOW TO SWIM DOES NOT MAKE YOU DROWN PROOF TO THOSE STUDENTS INVESTED/DEDICATED TO DECOLONISATION

Nkule Mabaso

Being aware of your privilege and prejudices does not mean you have overcome them.

yourselves with the limits of the ethical and political efficacy of your position.

In Civil Disobedience (1849), Henry David Thoreau theorises that ‘all men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the [instituion], when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.’

Thoreau offers a way in which to understand those embedded in the institution. He theorises that he is different from most – especially those in the institution – because these bureaucrats are confined by their environments, unaware of the natural world around them and, therefore, limited in their life experiences. For your own part, you have learned first hand that institutions are run by people: people make policies, and when they are called to account these same people respond with brutal and excessively draconian and cruel actions. They have the ability to exploit the ‘crises’ and push through undesired policies while you are too emotionally and physically distracted by events or upheavals to mount an effective resistance.

Student activism can be understood as the barometer through which the crucial problems and fights of each generation may be indicated, whilst having the curious challenge of not being able to move beyond symbolic and gestural reponses into entrenched and systematic challenges. You will have noticed this too in the last two years, as you come to explore and know yourself as political subjects during your studies. At least some of you may have grappled with your subjectivities and fought vigorously to resist an increase in tuition fees: your voices adding yet another layer to the sporadic actions and protests of past Michaelis students, who in their temporary networks have performed the task of making power visible, and called for the long-awaited curriculum reform that continues to be stalled. That higher education in South Africa faces severe challenges is unquestionable, and you might find yourself questioning how effective your actions are when you move beyond the temporary disruption of the institution, yet its systems appear to remain essentially unchanged. Your actions, too, join the history of student activism and protest in South Africa in general, but you are late-comers to the protest where students at historically black universities in South Africa have been protesting rising fees since 1994. Still, know that your actions are commendable and form part of the recognised need to engage with the development of a context-specific syllabus – a task that cannot be delinked from the country’s historical, social and political developments. Why am I invoking Thoreau? Resistance and protest are always imminent. In these times of especially heightened tensions – in which we are confronted with the realities of both near and distant suffering – you must again confront

So take care of yourselves and each other. Endeavour to be fair and just. Make no exceptions and fall not into the trap of compassion fatigue. There will be many instances in which you will be called on to fight systems of oppression, and the policies administered contrary to common benefit therein. There will be instances that will bring you closer to human pain and confront you with the responsibility of action. As you leave the academy know that your work as activists is not yet done. You must continue to be vigilant; continue to unmask power structures whether they are the patriarchal international art world, the institutions of higher education, or the multiple and intersecting systems of oppression and exploitation. Over and above the temporary sense of community you might have as a class, develop your own political position, employ your personal agency and move beyond symbolic to actual challenges. If there is one hope from me it would be that your experience of the institution has developed in you a self-reflexive capacity to synthesize information, develop a postion, and produce innovative interventions in novel and progressive directions. In your actions and position as creative practitioners, try to identify power structures, and continue to urge those exercising power to justify themselves. Nkule Mabaso Curator, Michaelis Gallery 2016

STUDENT WORK

14 ‘The Shape of Nothing’

CATHY ABRAHAM The starting point of my work as an artist is a search for meaning in a violent and turbulent world where there is overwhelming abuse of natural resources. I take ordinary everyday objects that are used in abundance and give them a space or a pedestal elevating their status in order to influence the thinking around what is given importance. I have chosen to speak through all these objects. Inspired by the Kabbalistic premise that there is no reality but rather only illusion; by philosophical questioning of the void; as well as by Tibetan Buddhist teachings on the nature of the mind, I focus on that which is empty, broken or discarded. In doing this I attempt to shift hierarchies and notions of value. In broken, unbroken, I have placed collected eggshells that were consumed in my home over a period of three years inside a shape made of red silk.

Originally inspired by the idiom ‘walking on eggshells’, I began the collection. The need to do this was indicative of the state of my domestic situation at the time. The marriage of broken shells with silk curtains reflects two conflicting and contrasting elements coming together to form a third space, a third new element. Drawing from the connective intersections within the Venn Diagram of Set Theory, this space is a space of connecting disparate entities and finding their commonality. The installation of my imperfect offering comprises dangling painted wire, found objects, cutouts, bulbs and mixed media paper drawings interspersed with pedestals balanced precariously. They elevate disparate and fragmented objects.

Within this installation the light bulbs represent the human physical fragility and the difficulties inherent A. the shape of nothing B. into the next (Detail)

in our closest relationships. I strung bulbs connected to electrical wires balancing on the painted pink wires to mimic interdependence and connectedness between things and people. Placing the broken atop a pedestal, or using objects to create a pedestal elevates both the object and the pedestal from their previous designations. The right of any object or person to be on any pedestal is called into question. Additionally, two-dimensional plywood cutouts of three-dimensional objects reference stability and illusion by distorting a visual reference of a plinth or crate and balancing it on its side. It is not what it seems to be yet at the same time is what it pretends to be. Re-contextualising dysfunctional and broken objects allows me to question the separateness and difference on which everyday perception relies. According to Kabbalah death is not something f inal, but rather the closing of one door and the opening of another â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Ashkenazi (2014)

an act of mourning as a signifier within the Jewish tradition. For seven days after an immediate family member passes on, the mourners cover all mirrors with cloth in order to deny their outer reflection and take the time instead to turn their gaze inward. The wall of doors denies both visual and sonic access to what lies beyond them. It is impossible to see the other side â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the viewer can only imagine what is there. In this way, while the viewer is denied physical access, turning inwards they have the opportunity of accessing meaning inside themselves. The covered doors which render a space inaccessible and the eggshells within the enclosed space speak about the enormity of loss bringing with it the overwhelming sense of destruction and despair that results from grief.

into the next comprises of four broken doors covered with folds in a blanket-like fabric. These replicate

C. into the next

C AT H Y ABRAHAM

broken unbroken

‘THE SHAPE OF NOTHING’

TOP: a solid breath BOTTOM: my imperfect offering (Detail)

18 ‘An artistic inquiry into the realms of space and time’

M.W. AHJUM This body of work is proposed as an artistic inquiry through the realms of space, time and matter while looking at past methods of scientific observation and artistic representation through the ages and what that means now…

skies. One thing that humankind has always shared has been the sky. Regardless of location, our imaginations have been captivated by the tapestry of the sky. Carl Sagan is quoted as saying ‘We’re made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself ’ (Edwards in Weiner, 2015:204). In the present era we are bombarded with information and images which are presented to us after being processed as a series of pixels. People view so much of this information on a digital screen. The methods of image-making have progressed by enormous bounds as technology reaches great advances.

My inquiry into this realm of observation and enchantment with space was prompted and motivated by my own interest in the physics; the archaic past and our perception of time. Artefacts from previous civilizations are markers of our presence in time, though those most remarkable are those which pertain to the passage of time. An example of such are the stone monoliths erected and arranged to observe the transition of the seasons and the passage of the stars. All things had a beginning and an end as certain as one season followed its antecedent; so death would come to everything that has ever come into existence. The current age, in which new discoveries are made at such a rapid rate in comparison to past eras, matters which were once considered certainties are now questioned now more than before. Archaeological sites such as Adam’s Calendar in Tzaneen, South Africa, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, pyramids in South America, Stonhenge in the United Kingdom and many more, thought to be sites of worship in some cases yet at the same time served as means to track, map and study the movement of the heavenly bodies. These have, in turn, informed us of our respective course within the

The images we are presented from the Hubble Telescope, IRAS and COBE are constructed from data collected and interpreted by computers to give us the images of brilliance; the birth and destruction of whole galaxies, which happened light-years ago. An instance of the past is what we see when we gaze into the sky. This can be explained mathematically through space-time and the general theory of relativity.

With such a wealth of knowledge available and intended to improve our lives, yet even with this information it seems far from the reality of ‘real life’. What does this mean to us? This peering into the past, as we witness the death of a star in all its brilliance as it becomes a supernova before imploding and becoming a Black hole and the reflections of Ross Bleckner come

A . 2 5 ° 3 5 ’ 4 0 . 8 8 ” S / 3 0 ° 1 7 ’ 1 9 . 1 7 ” E ( A d a m ’s C a l e n d a r ) , R e c l a i m e d A f r i c a n M a h o g a n y, 1 7 . 5 x 1 7 . 5 x 7 c m B. Singularity, Oil on Canvas, 150 x 130 cm

to mind: ‘ I think things shine with their maximum brilliance just at that point that they’re about to die’ (Rankin, 1987:22). In a way this work speaks of loss and death in the manner of the vanitas tradition; reminding us of our insignificant part in the ever-expanding frontiers of the universe. Art and science had, in the past, been closely connected; with both being concerned with, and requiring, close observation. As the centuries pressed on and information specialisation progressed they now stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. Though over time, the schism between art and science is gradually being closed. With overlaps in work by artists such as James Turrell, combining observation and scientific method to produce what the artist intends for the participant, as they are not merely viewers in these cases. In Ellis and Williams’ Flat and Curved Space Time it is stated that ‘The observational situation is being transformed’, and though not referring to art and our perception of the images and surface this is true in both regards: scientific and artistic. C. Oculus I (Annum Australis), Gold leaf and Oil on Canvas, 45 x 45 cm D. S e l e n e ( M o o n W i n d o w ) , O i l o n C a n v a s , 5 9 x 8 2 . 5 c m

M O G A M AT W H A L E E D AHJUM

Impact, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 92 cm

‘ A RT I S T I C I N Q U I RY T H R O U G H T H E R E A L M S O F S PA C E ’

I m a g i n e d G a l a x y , C h a r c o a l o n C o t t o n P a p e r, 2 1 x 2 9 . 7 c m

C A. Sheered, GiclĂ¨e Print, 74,67 x 112 cm B. Writhe, Video Still, Dimensions Variable C. Atonement, Video Still, Dimensions Variable

23 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;feltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

CEIL ANN of my family. Warm insulative felt, created from sheep wool and rigorous hand movements, acts as a nurturer and comforter, which once inhabited by my body, becomes reminiscent of a soothing womb. The manner in which I portray my own body in Felt resists dominant cultural constraints and normalcies, challenging social constructs of beauty, gender and identity. Through the over whelming masses of felt, and the blurring of lines of that which is human and animal, I attempt to create a personal narrative that rejects idealist aestheticisations. In concealing, and at times revealing, my own body, I determine the way in which this body is received and assert selfdefinition through these performances. D

Felt shows an autobiographical exploration of personal identity through dress and performance. In the union of human and animal, I create ambiguous and strange forms through which I disrupt notions of rigid gender roles and challenge the social constructs of the feminine ideal; an ideal which is continually determined by a deeply

entrenched patriarchy driven society. The role of the sheep speaks of the memories associated with my maternal grandparent â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sheep farm and the personal relationship with my grandmother as the matriarch D. S a m p l e i i , M i x e d M e d i a : H u m a n H a i r, S h e e p W o o l , S c r i m , 2 2 x 2 5 c m E . P e n i t e n t , M i x e d M e d i a I n s t a l l a t i o n : H o s i e r y, S h e e p W o o l , D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e F. U n t i t l e d i i , M o n o t y p e , 2 9 x 4 2 c m

CEIL ANN

Chrysalis, Giclèe Print, 112 x 74,67 cm

‘ F E LT ’

Pelt, Giclèe Print, 112 x 74,67 cm

26 ‘Invisibles’

CARLI BASSIN My body of work examines our relationship to the object as an entity that retains memories of our life experiences, and ultimately contributes to our identity. The object, being a physical form that is, in its manufacture, structured to be ‘perfect,’ represents the complete, recogniseable and tangible. But what happens when the object is tarnished, broken or not needed in its physical form any longer? My work is materialised from objects that I have acquired from dump sites, secondhand stores, flea markets, recycling facilities and nature. Everything, from the artworks to the plinths, is made from these materials that were pre-used or discarded throw-aways. In essence, things that were no longer wanted. B

For me, objects act as a symbols for measuring how changes within our lives affect the way we perceive the physical world around us. I have re-used and transformed these otherwise discarded objects as a way of representing transformation; to remind people of the past and to reinvent the object to be indicative of change. I have manipulated each object into the cube because the cube represents living in the world as we know it, with its rules, structures and boundaries. Despite the inflexibility of the materials, transformation was still possible. Similar to life, nothing is permanent and assured, but rather forever changing. My methods of glueing, stitching, compressing, reconstructing, buttoning and tying together the different objects commemorate the different ways in which objects can be reborn or rediscovered, ultimately how we are able to adapt and grow as well.

A . B a c k O b j e c t : P l a s t i c C h a i r, C e m e n t ; 7 0 x 7 0 x 7 0 c m / F r o n t O b j e c t : C l o t h e s , B u t t o n s ; 5 0 x 5 0 x 5 0 c m B . P l a s t i c To y P i e c e s , S u p e r g l u e ; 3 0 x 3 0 x 3 0 c m

C. Reconstructed Wooden High Chair; 36 x 36 x 36 cm D. T e d d y b e a r s , T h r e a d ; 3 0 x 3 0 x 3 0 c m E. Layers of Beach Sand, Woodglue; 30 x 30 x 30 cm

CARLI BASSIN

Surgical Scissors, Fabric, Cement; 30 x 30 x 30 cm

‘INVISIBLES’

Reconstructed Wooden Chair; 34 x 34 x 34 cm

30 ‘City Notes’

GEORGINA BERENS City Notes is a body of work by Georgina Berens that records a series of gestures concerned with care, healing and mending while highlighting the human presence within the city. These gestures took place in the Cape Town city bowl.

By recording this process, Berens does not only show photographs in their original form, but also presents the viewer with prints that have been reworked several times using various media. In Remediation, Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin use the term ‘remediation’ to describe how new types of media reform older types of media and thereby shift their meaning (Bolter & Grusin, 2000). In the remediation of images in Berens’ work – photograph to print to photocopy to transfer to lithograph – we see traces of each process in the final image. These traces of folds, pixels and textures show how the image was processed and the multiple edges of recopied pages become a part of the image.

Interested in marks left behind by pedestrians as they navigate the city space, Berens seeks out places where people have scratched names and other messages into city surfaces. A stick or palm pressed into wet cement, metal incised into the bark of a tree, the careful scratching away of old paint. An unwelcoming space to those who live on the city’s periphery and commute to seek resources and work, the city is mapped with harsh, defensive architecture that is designed to move crowds along and dates back to apartheid. For Berens these incised messages, that she refers to as city notes, are examples of the individual claiming the city – or a section of it within a moment of time – as their own.

In Sign Here!: Handwriting in the Age of New Media Sonia Neef and José van Dijk discuss what happens ‘when script is performed in a second medium’ (Neef, van Dijk & Ketelaar, 2006:13). In Berens’ prints, the original word on a wall, tree or pavement has been reformed in a third, fourth or fifth medium to the extent that it takes a moment to determine what one is looking at. The traces of edges of copied pages form frames around the image – perhaps urging the viewer to look at and consider the existence of the city note that occupies a blind spot.

In her aim to draw attention to the individual within the city, Berens curated a collection of city notes by making frottages (rubbings) of them. In a gesture of care, Berens revisited each site and filled the incised marks with pink chalk, thus highlighting the handwritten marks made by the individual that interrupt the clean lines of buildings and the spatial narrative of the city.

Prints that record fleeting moments – a quickly-drawn set of lines in wet cement – are often redolent with absence,

A A. A chalk-filled city note (Detail) B . To o l s m a d e b y t h e a r t i s t C. Stone lithograph D. A p a g e f r o m t h e p h o t o b o o k C i t y N o t e s

emptiness, but at the same time they are also a tool of remembrance. Handwriting ‘always gets its cultural authority

seemingly abstract scratched or drawn lines – track Berens’ movements around the city and react against how today’s maps are made to move people around the city in specific ways. Berens places care upon the individual by finding, highlighting, acknowledging, remediating and remapping marks embedded in the city to claim their personal space within it. _ Georgina Berens (1992) is a printmaker living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2016 and received the Matthew Somers Memorial Prize in 2014. Internships: Smith Studio, Warren Editions, The Artist’s Press.

from its claim of springing from a physical and living hand...’ and holds its presence ‘even if the subject of writing is no longer there’ (Neef, van Dijk & Ketelaar, 2006:15). In knowing that direct touch has taken place to make a mark or print, a form of recollection is evoked that is physically encapsulating and more immediate than a photograph. An old lithography stone, still bearing the traces of a map of Paarl, leans against the wall. The artist’s choice to remove all letters and numbers marking territories on the map – by digging into its surface, contradicts and undermines the assumed authority and voice of the map and that of the city planners from the apartheid era when the map was in use. Furthermore, other printed maps – with wandering, C

B o l t e r, J . & G r u s i n , R . 2 0 0 0 . R e m e d i a t i o n : U n d e r s t a n d i n g N e w M e d i a . M a s s a c h u s e t t s : F i r s t M I T P r e s s . N e e f , S . v a n D i j k & J . K e t e l a a r, E . 2 0 0 6 . S i g n H e r e ! : H a n d w r i t i n g i n t h e A g e o f N e w M e d i a . A m s t e r d a m : A m s t e r d a m U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s .

GEORGINA BERENS

Crayon frottage on newsprint, taken off the trunk of a tree

‘CITY NOTES’

Stone lithograph

34 ‘Immersed: Play and Meditation’

OLIVIA BOTHA My installation aims to slow people down, providing them with a sense of play and idiosyncratic meditation. A deep humming sound can be heard as the visitor enters the room – it grows louder and softer, fading into the background – with the intent of quieting the mind. Large, soft, colourful sculptures welcome visitors in, drawing them closer, perhaps sparking a child-like curiosity as they need to navigate between the shapes. The atmosphere might evoke memories of building fortresses with bedding and blankets at night, with only torches and lanterns for light. It evokes feelings of distant galaxies and outer-worldly daydreams.

It should entice visitors to climb into and nestle inside the sculptures. If they choose to enter the sculpture, they will be surrounded by the bright warm colours that flood the inside, completely engulfing them. Inside, you are no longer around everyone else – it becomes a private place in a public space.

A A. Immersed: Play and Meditation (Installation view) B. Endless Possibilities Cane, PVC Piping, LED Lights, Fabric. Approx. 2360 x 940 x 840 mm (Installation view)

My final year practice sought to build on the alignment between the two seemingly opposing forces of play and meditation by demonstrating that there are indeed times at which these two notions align. Central to the goal of producing an amalgamated state of play and meditation was the process of making soft, hand-stitched sculptures. This process of hand-stitching encouraged me to slow down in my own practice. I became more present and mindful of my intentions. The repetitive motion allowed my mind to drift off into a meditative or dreamlike state. This served me therapeutically â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it is a way of processing internal turmoil, providing me with a better understanding of myself, those around me, and the world I inhabit. This technique might seem rather serious in its appearance and therefore rendering it opposed to the notion of play. However, during my practical year I came to realise that these two notions intertwine effortlessly. A link that intrigues me between play and meditation is that both require and allow for an open mind to receive new ideas ( Jacob 2004:165). These new ideas lead to new possibilities, permitting us to see things for the first

time ( Jacob, 2004:165). As such, during the state of play or meditation, the brain can make more associations between previously unimagined thoughts (The Institute for Play, 2006; Brown & Ryan, 2003:823). Perhaps these new and unimagined thoughts are more accessible for children because of their playful nature, whereas adults might struggle more. However, a study found similarities between playfulness in both adults and children (Guitard, P., Ferland, F. & Dutil, E. 2005). According to this study playfulness in adults is composed of curiosity, a sense of humour, creativity, spontaneity, and pleasure. This suggests that it is still possible to access these ways of thinking as an adult. This study also found that these qualities filter into all aspects of adult life and become a way of approaching activity, not necessarily an activity on its own. Thus, as adults, we are still encouraged to play as a means to find new understandings and ways of experiencing the world. For me, this was possible while producing my sculptural installation for my final year. My aspiration would be that visitors might experience their own unique play-meditation, even if only for a moment in time.

B r o w n , K . W. & R y a n , R . M . 2 0 0 3 . T h e B e n e f i t s o f B e i n g P r e s e n t : M i n d f u l n e s s a n d I t s R o l e i n P s y c h o l o g i c a l W e l l - b e i n g . I n J o u r n a l o f P e r s o n a l i t y a n d S o c i a l P s y c h o l o g y . 84(4):822-848. DOI 10.103/0022-3514.84.4.822 G u i t a r d , P. , F e r l a n d , F. & D u t i l , E . 2 0 0 5 . T o w a r d a B e t t e r U n d e r s t a n d i n g o f P l a y f u l n e s s i n A d u l t s . I n O TJ R : O c c u p a t i o n , P a r t i c i p a t i o n a n d H e a l t h . 2 5 ( 1 ) 9 - 2 1 . A v a i l a b l e : h t t p : // o t j . s a g e p u b . c o m . e z p r o x y. u c t . a c . z a / c o n t e n t / 2 5 / 1 / 9 . f u l l . p d f [ 2 0 1 6 , J u l y 1 0 ] . Jacob, M.J. 2004. In The Space of Ar t. In Buddha mind in Contemporary Ar t. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA. T h e N a t i o n a l I n s t i t u t e f o r P l a y . n . d . A v a i l a b l e : h t t p : // w w w. n i f p l a y. o r g [ 2 0 1 6 , J u l y 1 1 ] .

OLIVIA BOTHA

TOP: Bloom. Raffia, LED Lights, Fabric and PVC Piping. Approx. 570 x 2100 x 700 mm BOTTOM: Into the Dream Cane, PVC Piping, LED Lights and Fabric. Appox 1600 x 830 x 900 mm (Installation View)

‘IMMERSED: P L A Y A N D M E D I T AT I O N ’

Endless Possibilities Cane, PVC Piping, LED Lights, Fabric. Approx. 2360 x 940 x 840 mm

38 ‘Sincerely, With Love’

FANIE BUYS Sincerely, With Love is my farewell to childhood. It ’s a body of work that looks at who I am, how I got here, and how I coped with the process. Ever since I could remember I’ve been drawing princesses. Somewhere in my mom’s house in George there’s a box full of these drawings. I think that Sincerely, With Love is probably best understood as a continuation of that practice. This constitutes paintings, videos, sculptures, and writings – which provide a substance to the imaginary world I lived in throughout my childhood and adolescence. This isn’t to say that I had a particularly difficult time of growing up (I’m a white middle class boy from the suburbs) but the few knocks I endured have affected me, and in making this work I feel like I’ve started processing them.

and it affected my mother deeply at the time (I was all of three-and-a-half ). I have vague memories of a heavy grey mood, my mother was convalescing and the only thing she could really do was watch the funeral procession on the telly. Having spoken about it now with my mother, it corresponded with a time of great personal, emotional distress. Diana became a symbol of something before that upset, something before I realised that bad things happen and they sometimes happen to me. Diana’s death was the first time I saw grief. The first time I saw the brittle grasp of emotion. I acknowledge that the position Diana held in the establishment she represented is deeply contentious. However the outstanding capacity for empathy and affection she displayed (demonstrated by the enormous reaction to her death) is how I relate to her legacy. It is who she was as a person – not as a figurehead.

The concept of a ‘princess’ (in relation to this body of work) doesn’t denote a specific position in a hierarchy. It’s a term I’ve come to use to denote a deep affection. Princesses are people who, like the flashbulbs that so often illuminate them, emit flares of hope. More than anything, princesses make me feel like I’m not alone, that I can manage – because they have on a far larger scale. The first princess I can remember idolising was Princess Diana. Her death was a shock to the world,

The paintings I’ve made, the people I’ve chosen to be in those paintings, and the sort of erraticstream-of-consciousness tone I’ve adopted in my accompanying works are all part of an ongoing preoccupation with camp and my own gay/queer identity. It ’s not a statement on what it is to be queer, femme, gay, a womxn, or a celebrity – but it does seek to acknowledge how aspects of those identities have influenced me. It ’s a form of homage. This passage from I Feel Love: Disco and its Discontents (by Tavia Nyong’o) about the song by Donna Summer of the

A. Untitled (Mug), Ceramic, Dimensions Variable B. Untitled (T Shirt), Screenprint on t-shirt, Size Large

same name, captures the sense of what I’m trying to say far better: Equally adapted to scenarios of interpersonal seduction and ecstatic communal dancing, ‘I Feel Love’ seemed to refer most directly to the feelingtone of singing itself, whether that singing came in the form of the prerecorded song pouring f rom the discotheque’s speakers, or f rom the lips of the dancer-listener prompted to sing along – ‘oooh, I feel love, I feel love, I feeeeelooove’ – less in imitation than in collusion with the now extended vibration produced by organs attached to machines attached to organs, reverberating and echoing a feeling tone between the live and mediated. The idea of reverberation is what I feel encapsulates how Sincerely, With Love works. That from a form of imitation (for example: representational painting) that process reverberates out to eventually become a new sound, or at least a sound quite different from what it started out as. I try to venture from my paintings (my paintings are somewhat in this space too) into a space of production that is sort of ‘try-hard-but-don’t-quiteget-it-right-but-that ’s-ok-too’.

In Encoding/Decoding Stuart Hall describes a model of media where a broadcasted message only begins to make sense when it becomes incorporated into a social practice. Like my mother and her friend who greet one another in ‘flowerpot language’, from the children’s show Bill and Ben. The incorporation of things like this into how we interact and communicate with one another, locate people with similar interests, find people we feel at home with. The mugs, t-shirts and videos I’ve made all carry an element of multiplicity: an anxious need for connection. Either made in multiples or with the potential to be indefinitely repeated these works continue to echo. Similar to the nature of the pictures I have painted from, images which have already been reproduced and circulated and finally found on Google images. The people I paint are the people I love. They’re people who’ve shown an incredible about of strength and integrity, and they’re people whose artistry in some form or another inspires me to try, if not harder, at least again. That is so incredibly twee and sentimental but I think part of doing this is realising that that’s just who I am.

C . P a i n t i n g W i t h S t ra n g e P e r s p e c t i v e ( C l o s e r To Yo u ? ) ( D o n n a S u m m e r ) , O i l o n C a n v a s , 1 0 0 x 7 6 c m D. A P a i n t i n g W h i c h M a d e M e T h i n k O f W h a t A l l e g o r i c a l F i g u r e s A r e ( P r i n c e s s D i ) , O i l o n C a n v a s , 3 5 x 2 5 c m

FA N I E BUYS

Stills from Exercise Your Demons, Digital Video, Dimensions Variable

‘ S I N C E R E LY, WITH LOVE’

Princess Diana Leaving The Ritz (One Of The Last Pictures Of Princess Di), Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm

A. Water Thief, Brass Box (9 x 9 x 12 cm), Multi Plate Etching with Aquatint (26 x 63 cm), Audio Component (01;00;00) Looped B . U n t i t l e d D r a w i n g M a c h i n e , B a m b o o , S t r i n g , D c M o t o r, W o o d e n G e a r s , G r a p h i t e , 6 x 1 m

43 ‘So it goes...’

LEIGHTON CALDER

The physical art object, which is only the spatialized outcome of the process of art making, is not the work of art. Instead, the work of art is the temporal undergoing – the acting and the doing – which is ultimately an act of reconstruction: a participation with the world in the co-construction of the world. – Aaron Stoller (2016:p59) Through a series of temporally based processes, this body of work aims towards an investigation and re-evaluation of time-consciousness, a way of thinking of time which has been warped into spatial terms by the sciences and into fundamentally abstract monetary terms by the capitalist revolution. This has been executed through the critique of westernisted musical standards and the alienated temporality of contemporary life under capitalism. From the ancient Greeks to the industrial revolution, these works add to a discussion of the ideology and

technology leading to the production of abstract or ‘clock time’ and its effects on time-consciousness. For Stoller, this qualitative approach to time is future-directed, synthetic and emergent and the most significant error in current aesthetic theory is the failure to account for art as an act that emerges from temporal flow or lived experience (Stoller 2016:48) or ‘lived time’ for Minkowski or ‘durée’ for Bergson. The dichotomy between the subjective experience of time or the Bergsonian notion of ‘durée’ and spatialised, commodified ‘clock time’ is axiomatic to this exhibition both in its production and reception. The employment of sonic elements in these works makes reference to the Fluxist happenings of Robert Morris and John Cage to further elucidate broader themes surrounding this dichotomy of teleological conceptions of time and the psychology surrounding temporality and mortality.

Bergson, H., Ansell-Pearson, K., Ó Maoilearca, J. & McMahon, M. (2002). Henri Bergson. 3rd ed. New York: Continuum, pp.45-350 Minkowski, E. (1970). Lived time. Northwestern University Press. Evanston, Ill S t o l l e r, A . ( 2 0 1 6 ) . T i m e a n d t h e C r e a t i v e A c t . T r a n s a c t i o n s o f t h e C h a r l e s S . P e i r c e S o c i e t y , 5 2 ( 1 ) , p p . 4 7 - 5 8 A u d i o c o m p o n e n t s c a n b e f o u n d o n l i n e a t h t t p s : // s o u n d c l o u d . c o m / t - c a l d e r

LEIGHTON CALDER

A Revolution in Time (1), Monotype Print with Ink Drawing (1.2 x 1.3 m) Audio Component (00;00;37) Looped

‘SO IT GOES...’

A Revolution in Time (2) Monotype Print with Ink Drawing (1.2 x 1.3 m) Audio Component (00;01;27) Looped

46 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Recceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

CHRISTOPHER JAMES CHANDLER Our bones are the same colour. V iolence seems to sur round us. And Histor y repeats itself. Histor y is complex like the photographs that attempt to document it. But reality can never truly be captured, as photography will always consist of moments ripped from their context. War, like death, is inevitable and will be documented. V iolence and photography go hand in hand: two different kinds of shooting. A

B A. Valplatte, Video Still B. Brotherly Love, Video Still

C . B e n ( s k u l l f o u n d d u r i n g t h e ‘ b o rd e r w a r ’ ), C - Ty p e , 5 9 4 x 4 2 5 m m

CHRISTOPHER JAMES CHANDLER

‘RECCE’

G r a v e a t D i d o V a l l e y C e m e t e r y, S i m o n s t o w n , R e s i n C o a t e d H a n d P r i n t , 4 6 0 x 5 6 2 m m

51 ‘Vakadzi’

CHIEDZA CHIMWAZA Vakadzi Shona to English translation (noun, adjv.) Of the female gender Vakadzi is a commentary on the representation and stereotypes around women. My aim in this project was to study women who I know, and have met whilst working on the project in their most intimate moments and environments. Within Vakadzi there a several recurring and underlying themes namely Feminism, the destabilising and deconstruction of female gender stereotypes and the elimination of society ’s definition of beauty. I chose to try to realistically visually depict numerous aspects of being a person of the female gender. I believe that due to our oppressed past, and the current conditions in our homes, religions, corporate sectors, political spheres, working with women or the idea of women is constantly problematised and validly so. With that in mind I wanted to create a body of work that wasn’t trying to comment only on these problems surrounding the female in today’s world but that also complicates and celebrates my gender. I tried to achieve this by only photographing women within their interior domestic spaces, due to their contained nature and because for many women this is where one has fewer inhibitions, and I believe that one’s personal daily surroundings begins to tell the story of the person within it. This body of work draws from my personal experience as well as that of those close to me, including women in my surrounding areas. This investigation includes all aspects of being female, for example, negative and positive stereotypes, expectations, and assumptions. In relation to the notion of redefining beauty in order for it to directly represent a more ‘realistic’

concept Vakadzi seeks out the deconstruction of the notion of the ideal beauty, question the definition of beauty and also redefine the idea of beauty. It does this simplistically by presenting with a body of work set in women’s reality and stating that it is beautiful. In relation to Feminism Vakadzi seeks to interrogate and destabilise stereotypes and injustices against women as well as societal pressures targeted at women.

CHIEDZA CHIMWAZA

‘ VA K A DZ I ’

54 ‘Natura Morta’

CATERINA CIANI This exhibition is focused on the still life. These still lifes are in a sense a portrait, or representation of myself. I explore this idea using mundane objects and items of food in a ‘constructed’ manner. I do this in order to place myself and my heritage into the contemporary, while still acknowledging what existed before me, and to thus investigate my Italian heritage outside of Italy. In this work I investigate my connectedness and lack of connection to my heritage. Emigration naturally places an influence on your heritage, and poses difficult questions about ‘belonging’.

of photography. The visceral and perishing elements to some images further allude to art historical references, and unsettle the beauty that many still life images portray. This in turn alludes to my feelings of belonging and yet not belonging, of being settled and yet unsettled, in relation to my family’s migration. The still life is used in a way that explores the relationship between photography and painting, between food and culture, between representation and tradition, and also cosmopolitanism and globalisation, which leads to the displacement and adaptation of certain cultures and traditions. Objects are closely related to consumption and necessity. Although my practice does not explore the Dutch ‘Vanitas’ ideals of death in life and the power of time over people and all living things, I use similar household objects to convey the ideas of identity and the results or consequences of migration and displacement, as well as how these objects inform and symbolise the ideas and places you identify yourself with the most. Food has been an important signifier not only historically, but also in my own practice: I use it to investigate culture and tradition, and to metaphorically internalise the effects of migration on a person’s heritage and identity.

The aesthetic and the subject matter I have used in most of the work makes reference to the Italian Renaissance and Italian Baroque eras of image-making, specifically looking at still life images, or ‘natura morta’. I look at these art historical images in relation to the idea of diaspora, food, culture, and tradition as influences in my everyday life. This exhibition deals with very similar ideals of displacement and looks at how the Italian culture that I have grown up around has been either adapted in a context foreign to Italy, or maintained and repeated, in everyday life. The references made in my body of work are an investigation into my personal history. The painterly images referenced are explored with a similar aesthetic to the references, in terms of chiaroscuro light, rich colour and specific subject matter, expressed through the use

A. Perspective, Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (Framed), 59.4 x 47.5 cm B. Life, Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (Framed), 59.4 x 47.5 cm

C. Mirage, Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (Framed), 47.5 x 59.4 cm

C AT E R I N A CIANI

Tra n s m u t a t i o n , L i g h t j e t P r i n t o n Fu j i C r y s t a l A rc h i ve Pa p e r ( Fra m e d ) , 5 9 . 4 x 4 7 . 5 c m

‘ N AT U R A M O RTA ’

Origin, Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (Framed), 59.4 x 47.5 cm

58 ‘Auto-Hypnography’

KAYLA CRITCHFIELD

The bed in art has long been a symbol of intimacy, isolation, intermediacy and repose. The routine cycle of sleep and hibernation is something that is present throughout the entire living population of the earth, and my bed, as an object, has always held incredible significance in my life. With regard to mental and physical healing, it has been the site of my most intimate conversations with others and myself; it has been a place in which I reflect deeply, connect, grieve and celebrate. My bed has, in many ways, become a reflection of myself and of my daily life in its purest form, and it is for this reason that I chose to work with the space as the site of a massive and prolonged investigation into a my own psyche; producing Auto-Hypnography. In an attempt to further understand my own relationship with sleep I conducted what I concluded to be an anthropological study on my bed, as well as the various

beds I have slept in throughout the past year. Anthropology works with the notion of surveillance through participation. In my work, I attempt to treat the bed as a landscape and then participate in the inactivity of sleep with the intention of recording what makes each ‘landscape’ unique to itself. I wanted to deconstruct gazes of all sorts and grapple with what they mean when positioned within the gallery space. In my work I attempt to deconstruct the bed into a landscape that can be studied, such that the compilation of text, images and other records of activity or people I interact with within the space may become an anthropological ethnography of sorts, as well as an introspective collection of self. Auto-Hypnography is about creating a space that is deeply introspective and centring, focusing on the evolutionary value of sleep within a specific individual and how it evolves when it becomes performative.

A. Sleep Experiment, Video Still, Dimensions Variable

B. Hypnography/Self, Photographic Book

K AY L A CRITCHFIELD

Residue III, Photographic Print, 42 x 60 cm REM, Video Still, Dimensions Variable

‘AUTO-HYPNOGRAPHY’

Conception I, Digital Print, 112 x 195 cm

B A . e B u m n a n d i n i , S c u l p t u r a l P a i n t i n g , M D F, A c r y l i c . 1 2 0 0 x 6 0 0 m m B . e B r e e , S c u l p t u r a l P a i n t i n g , M D F, A c r y l i c . 1 2 0 0 x 6 0 0 m m

63 ‘Inkosi Ibenathi – People, Places and Spaces’

DADA KHANYISA This work is specially dedicated to aBantu; on the African continent and abroad. The interest in the human condition serves as a starting point when looking at places and spaces. People become an extension of their spaces, just as much as a place is a reflection of those who occupy it. Being exposed to different people in the many spaces I have lived and experienced is what fuels this body of work. From the people who walk through city centres submitting their CVs, to the gogos selling amagwinya at the taxi rank. The train fruit sellers, public sector workers, Kasi advert wall painters and the ‘things need to change’ protestors. The ones who handshake with a thumbpop in agreement, also the auntie who works a ‘night shift ’ just so food can be on the table. Not forgetting

the sneaker heads and everyone who plans their good day outfit a week in advance. Inkosi Ibenathi is a work that highlights problematic personal and societal habits while offering a solution through a gesture of prayer. This comes from a sincere place of appreciation and love for the people around me. This body of work is dedicated to those people.

C. eBree (Detail), Sculptural Painting, MDf, Acrylic. 1200 x 600 mm

DADA KHANYISA

‘ I N K O S I I B E N AT H I – P E O P L E , P L A C E S A N D S PA C E S ’

Father Figure, Mixed Media Installation

66 ‘Public Secret’

GRETA DAVIS My work focuses on the effect that social media, particularly Instagram has on us, as it plays such an integral role in our connected global culture. Instagram and the sharing of images bring into question the blurring of boundaries of privacy and publicity as well as the shifting of our thoughts around it. Today the purpose of Images has shifted. This means we not only take photos because the moments are important; the moments we photograph become important because we take the pictures. Constant connection changes the way we think of ourselves: we feel like we only ‘exist’ because we are sharing with others. There is a false sense of entitlement given to us by social media and the access it gives us into others lives – Not only do we feel like we need to be available, but we expect others to be too.

of geo tag, dim lighting or unusual crop. They are essentially ‘public secrets’. I would compare the sharers to children who whisper in their friend’s ear in clear sight of another classmate, purely so that their classmate will know that they have a secret. I Share therefore I am – we have to show our followers that we have private spaces, but in doing this we are making them public, blurring the boundaries of privacy. Exploding the confines of a screen, I am bringing virtual space to physical space, spending time painting, and engaging with the images, producing a physical object that can be viewed within a gallery; can be owned and therefore can hold value. The viewer reads the wall full of paintings in the same way they would an online collection. When we scroll through Instagram there are lulls and intensities as there are in my collection. The intention is to stop the disconnect between the digital and physical. The artwork therefore becomes a social object defined by the conversation around it. I am reinserting them into the freely accessible digital realm – engaging the questions of authorship, originality and value that are so prominent within a space of ‘sharing’. The accessibility of digital media can be used as a tool to connect people with galleries: to bring people to see the art in person – on my Instagram account (@gretaannedavis), using the hashtag – #illbepaintingyou.

Exploring this availability, I painted and reposted the Instagram images of the people I follow, destroying their original meaning, giving them a new definition in the context of my work. A new perspective – crop, colour shift, juxtaposition, etc. The gallery space holds different meaning to the digital space of social media. When I re-share the painted images on Instagram their meaning is altered again. My works explores the sharing of spaces that are kept private within the publicised post. I paint photographs of private moments that are obviously of meaning to the sharer but are not fully shared, either with a cryptic caption, lack

A A. Public Secret , Exhibition photograph B. This is not a Yolk, Oil and Acr ylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm C. Maybe these are why we turned out funny, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm

D. G o F I G u r e , O i l a n d A c r y l i c o n C a n v a s B o a r d , 2 5 4 x 2 5 4 m m E. Not my beautiful house, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm F. N o o n e â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s m a k i n g a c a n o e o u t o f m e , O i l a n d A c r y l i c o n C a n v a s B o a r d , 2 5 4 x 2 5 4 m m G. Miztaken, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm

G R E TA DAV I S

Khoi Boy, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm

‘PUBLIC SECRET’

Something smells Fishy, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas Board, 254 x 254 mm

70 ‘The Blue Room’

ISABELLA FOULIS transformation, consumption and collection of iconography & wonder in the Catholic Church

and translation, overuse and repetition. Remade out of foodstuff such as chocolate and hard candy the objects

The Blue Room installation is the result of a year’s exploration into my personal interest and love of the religious icon. The work I have made stems from my personal belief system, Catholicism, and is the motivation behind my concerns. The two concerns that are at the core of my artistic practice are: Concern 1: Objects/ materiality/translation/transformation, and Concern 2: Religion and art as commodity/collection/cult of wonder. The Blue Room embraces the kitsch and sentimental as it plays with reproductions of Catholic iconography. The space evokes a theatrical sense of wonder as it pulls from the theatrics of the cathedral space with its tall stained glass windows and burning incense. Exploring the relationship

take on new meaning as they depict a visual metaphor of the Real Presence created during the transubstantiation process. Real Presence in Roman Catholic theology is created by the Transubstantiation ceremony of the Eucharist. This is the process in the Catholic church where, during Holy Communion, once the priest has blessed the bread and wine and made holy, it +becomes+ the body and blood of Jesus Christ and is given to the communicants to eat and drink. Catholics believe that they are actually ingesting (‘devouring’ and ‘absorbing’) Christ. A

that people have to their faith, the Commodification of Religion is brought to light and used as a tool of engagement. As our collection of Catholic iconography grows do we feel a stronger connection to the faith? Images and store bought ‘merchandise’ associated with the Catholic faith are transformed through materiality

Christ’s blood and flesh are as food and nourishment for the soul and body. And so the edibility of the sculptures resides in the very doctrine of the Catholic faith, as we ingest the Body of Christ through the transubstantiation process and His image through His ‘merchandise’. Significance is brought to the fridges, as they now have become vessels of collection and consumption, singling out the connection between food and faith and the consumption of Catholicism.

A . C a n d y R o s a r y ( Te a l ) , I s o m a l t , 4 x 5 0 c m B. Jesus, Milk Chocolate, 10 x 25 cm

C . J e s u s ( G r e e n ) , J e s u s M e l t i n g ( B l u e ) , M a r y M e l t i n g ( P i n k ) , P l a s t e r, 1 0 x 2 5 c m D. H o l y F a m i l y ( P u r p l e ) , I s o m a l t , 1 8 x 1 3 c m

ISABELLA FOULIS

Small Candy Saints (and bowl), Isomalt, 2 x 7 cm

‘THE BLUE ROOM’

C h r i s t ( B u s t i n R e d ) , P l a s t e r, 1 0 x 2 1 c m

A.. smile, Film Stills

75 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sparkleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

TEGAN GREEN My aim in this body of work was to determine ways to achieve a sense of well-being, avoid depressive feelings and to find ways to represent my struggles with my mood. In my third year I examined my experience with depression. In my fourth year I had aspirations for eudemonia. I wanted to experience happiness, curiosity, vitality and self-motivation. Strangely, I have found it easier to make work about depression than about happiness. This may be attributed to the stereotypes and clichĂŠ surrounding representations of happiness. This realisation led to my interest in the surface veneer of happiness. I felt compelled to look at decoration, stickers and sparkly objects. I have been exploring and dealing with the notion of forcing happiness by covering my face and body in an excess of colourful and shiny items. I have also addressed the societal expectation of a permanent cheerful disposition by making a video of myself attempting to smile for ten minutes. As the video progresses it becomes difficult to maintain this performative smile and the artifice is revealed. This insubstantial healing of myself is

reflective of the ineffective methods used to treat depression. I have been finding ways to express socially unfavourable emotions. By allowing feelings with both positive and negative connotations to coexist and avoid suppression of sadness and anger, it becomes more possible to examine the issue of mental illness with less prejudice.

B. untitled (Detail) C. nonpareils

TEGAN GREEN

untitled, Film Stills

‘ S PA R K L E ’

nonpareils

78 ‘A room of my own’

JESSICA-ANNE HOLDENGARDE I am sitting on the floor, sewing and mending an old chair. I’m occupying the room. In the corner of the room sits an old tv on the floor playing It was only a dream (2016). It’s a performance, a conversation with myself from fragments of how I understand and try to explain a traumatic experience while sewing hand-me-downs to an old found armchair. In the other corner of the room is a window, the fabric of the curtains grow and emerge out of the wall. Collages and fragments of found imagery are hanging from threads sewed into the curtain, like nostalgic bell jars. The cut-up images are oscillating reminders of something I’m still trying to understand. This room becomes my safe space and it is where a new language attempts to challenge the old. A room of my own is a private space in which my medium of work begins to investigate my past and how I remember it. I perceive collage as performative, the cutting and ripping technique acts as a medium that removes the layers of the subconscious while creating a counter discourse to linear perceptions of thought.

This years work started with an urge to collect intriguing photographs from various junk stores across Cape Town, fragments of imagery that stimulated a specific narrative. Photographs, magazines, postcards, and various remains

of untold stories. I was in search of something that stands out, strikes and jolts a specific need to collect. The collecting of images speaks to the visual quality of memory. The objects tug at the remembrance of a past experience. The collecting of these ‘remains’ reflects a performance of my own ‘practical memory’ 1 . The rearranging of them becomes a curatorial performance. A mapping of the traumatised psyche.

A room of my own began to investigate the therapeutic effects collage had by hosting mini workshops with some of my friends. We would sit in my room, cut and and rip through magazines and photographs that we had collected. Slowly, stories of our personal traumas would manifest as a fragmented memory-scape: a collaged narrative of our experiences. Our stories weren’t that different and we had found a space in which we felt safe to express them. Collage is a cathartic healing process and the room in which these workshops took place seemed to become a safe space in which we could voice our experiences without the interrogation of rational

B e n j a m i n , W. 1 9 9 9 . “ T h e S t o r y T e l l e r ” a n d “ T h e Ta s k o f T h e T r a n s l a t o r ” i n I l l u m i n a t i o n s ( e n d s ) H a n n a h A r e n d t . P i m l i c o : L o n d o n

perceptions of thought. Collage is a medium in which the fractured memory-scape of a traumatised psyche can present itself in its fully fragmented form. Due to the early processes of this body of work, quite naturally the taboo of a personal sexual violence began to reveal itself at the centre of the exhibition. The trauma associated with this taboo stems from an inherited patriarchal violence that I believe is generational. Did we inherit such trauma because the generation before us could not voice theirs? My collages attempt to defy the normative and inherited ways of looking. By cutting, ripping and rearranging the past in order to make sense of its remains as well as challenge them. The titles of the work are pieced together from poems I have written after sexual experiences. Like the works themselves, even the titles represent the need to articulate a fragmented self that is linked to the inherent trauma associated with the taboo of sexual violence. Trauma is an experience that sits as an image in the mind that is unrecognisable, broken and in pieces. As I began to perform the act of the collector so I accumulated the stimulus of photographs, magazines and discarded fragments that eventually recognises my own past and yearns to deal with it. To tell a trauma is to allow it to present itself exterior to the turmoil

of silence that it sits within when housed in the body and our subconscious. A room of my own brings to light, through my personal investigation of trauma, the need to criticise hegemonic systems of violence that still affect our social norms today. The merging of found media is an appropriation of memory which represents the almost fictional state of trauma. Trauma is not sensible or rational. A room of my own attempts to transform trauma into a narrative and thus an act of storytelling. Like a child at play, through cutting, ripping, and pasting images together so a manifestation of a new narrative is formed. A narrative from the discarded remains of untold ones. There is something inescapable about the way in which unsettling memories of my past seem to manifest themselves in the process of my work and my everyday life. ‘Traces of the story teller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel’ (Benjamin 1999:91) A traumatic experience embeds itself within the everyday practice of an individual. The story of my own experience of violence has begun (like the potter’s) to cling to the vessel of my work. The trace of trauma is impossible to escape.

A. pretty please, i’ll just keep ripping at the seams, Mixed Media Collage, 12 x 15 cm B. with her gestural giggle she took my hand and led me to a safer place, Mixed Media Collage, 32 x 29 cm C . I n h e r e n t l y, e v e n i n s i l e n c e w e f i g h t , V i d e o

JESSICA-ANNE HOLDENGARDE

S i n c e r e l y, d a n c i n g , b u t y o u r h a n d s r e m a i n a n d t h a t â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s t h e t h i n g , C o l l a g e o n T r a c i n g P a p e r, 2 9 0 x 3 6 , 5 c m

‘A R O O M O F MY OWN’

T h e n i g h t b e c a m e a b l u r, p o i g n a n t r e m i n d e r s a n d t h e i r w o r d s o f r e c o g n i t i o n ( d e t a i l ) , M i x e d M e d i a C o l l a g e , 9 0 x 7 4 , 5 c m

82 ‘What If? ’

STEPHEN HOWARD-TRIPP What if ? This is a question that excites me every day, being passionate about mediums of fiction and storytelling. I’ve discovered, however, that the greatest home for the question of ‘what if ’ is found in the arena of philosophy. What if there is a god? What if there isn’t? What if we are all just living inside a computer somewhere? Sometimes these ‘what ifs’ can start sounding less and less convincing to many people, but I find myself thinking that being convinced is not entirely that important. Philosophy is a game that plays with answerless questions that have consumed and boggled mankind through its entire existence. There are just some things we may never be able to prove, or disprove. For an artist this is terribly exciting, and offers countless opportunities.

the hours of ‘make believe’ we play as children, but as we get older we find it harder to allow ourselves to succumb to play. With this body of work I am attempting to create an experience and space that people can feel comfortable with being unsure and embrace the ‘what if ’.

‘What ifs’ provide an incredible playground for thought and exploration. What if we decide for a moment to allow ourselves to be convinced by a story or belief that has previously been labelled as nonsense? What if, for that moment, that act of playing in this uncertainty helps us critically look at ourselves in the world around us in a more enlightened way? We do not have to proclaim our belief in anything, rather we allow ourselves to indulge in the ‘what if ’.

This indulgence is commonplace in our society. Films, theatre, novels and video games absorb us in moments of immersion, and for many, such as myself, these experiences can be profound and even life-changing. It is hard for many, however, to explore a ‘what if ’ if it contradicts or challenges their belief structure or even seems too silly or childish. It is interesting to take note of

This group of works has stemmed specifically from a fascination with the philosophy of determinism and free will. It has been inspired by the question ‘what if our lives and the story of our reality has been predetermined?’ Throughout history we find people who have believed they can predict the future and many religions that believe their gods are omniscient, knowing all that is and will be. These beliefs lean toward a world that is deterministic, that everything that will happen has already been decided. This concept then poses questions surrounding the idea of free will and ethics. If everything has been determined then do we have any control over our future decisions? Thought in this arena of philosophy brings up many interesting questions surrounding our actions and beliefs. Again this line of thought is not meant to convince

A.Untitled Story, Interactive Slide Projector B.Untitled Story, Interactive Slide Projector

or argue, but rather to create a space of introspection surrounding the topics it may summon up. It is meant to be an individual experience that is personal to whoever takes part. Part of engaging with these philosophical questions requires a certain level of curiosity, a state of wonder. Personally for me this curiosity is mimicked in my fascination with technology and how things work. I think back to the industrial revolution and our development of technology. For many people seeing machines move and create for the first time must have seemed like magic to them, it was a time of true wonder and curiosity. I have attempted to try and capture a similar experience with my work to create a more cohesive experience that aims to draw in and immerse the viewer, a real space of the ‘what if ’. When talking about determinism it may seem odd to bring up the mediums of film, theatre and video games, however these methods of storytelling offer great philosophical playgrounds. This is not merely found in their content but also within the fundamental structure of their creation. At the very essence of storytelling every experience is deterministic in some form or another. The storyteller already knows what will happen and has complete control over what will be revealed and what will not. Therefore they have control over the audience’s expectations and experience.

Film has total control over what the audience sees and hears. Theatre is similar, however, the presence of live actors creates a more visceral experience. Video games on the other hand provide an audience with a predetermined experience with the illusion of freedom and control through interactivity. The work found in this exhibition seeks to borrow and utilise some of the elements and characteristics found in these mediums. Within the works there can also be found references to narratives found in theatre and video games that are self-aware of their medium’s deterministic nature. Possibly the most important element borrowed, however, is the use of interactivity. In video games interactivity creates the illusion of free will and choice within a predetermined narrative. This is highly effective in immersing the player in an experience, and because of this the opportunity for individual engagement with an audience is immense. Interactivity is vital to my work as its aim is to shrink the distance between the viewer and the work itself. Having the viewer become an essential piece to the completion of the artwork is paramount in creating a unique individual experience for each person. The use of interactivity is also proving to help create a more playful and comfortable space for people, in the hope that they may let their guard down and engage with the work in a more curious and excited attitude.

C. Fortune-telling Machine

STEPHEN HOWARD-TRIPP

Always A Lighthouse, Always A Man, Painting Stereoscope Installation

‘ W H AT IF?’

Blueprint Machine, Interactive Painting, 60 x 80 cm

A . g o l d f u l l a , G o l d G l i t t e r, G o l d s t r i n g a n d G o l d B e a d s o n P r a y e r M a t , 1 0 8 x 6 8 c m

87 ‘Fulla’

LAYLAA JACOBS Fulla is the name of a Barbie-like fashion doll marketed to children of Islamic and Middle-eastern countries as an alternative to Barbie. Fulla is known as ‘a girls dream doll’ displaying the ideal dress code and behaviour of a Muslim Woman. I aim to show my desire to merge both Fulla and Barbie as one identity. As much as I attempt to combine these two identities I will always be observed as Fulla. Fulla is about my inner chaos as a Muslim woman facing challenges most people take for granted. Muslim school encouraged me to be modest in my behaviour as well as in my dress code, but when returned home I’d play with my Barbie. I am torn between what I should be and what I want to be. Body adornments and embellishments cover each of the six prayer mats. I am stripping the prayer mat from its actual function as a sacred object. The prayer

as figures/portraits, showing the binary of the prayer mats and the body adornments. Each body adornment follows the pattern of the prayer mat. Emphasising my attempt to alter the expectations of being a modest Muslim women by westernising these expectations.

This action shows the West imposing itself on me through the media but I am also represented as the one imposing on my own religion and challenging this idea of what a modest Muslim woman should be and how they should appear with my work.

mats face all directions (Muslims face the East when praying) emphasising the action of being westernised by the adornments, which glorify the prayer mat and are no longer seen as prayer mats. They are identified

In my video piece called ‘Cleaning Fullas mess’ I am cleansing Islam from the stain identified as the West but at the same time I am depicting myself as the thing imposing/staining Islam. The more I relentlessly struggle to remove the nail polish stains from the Tasbih (a form of reciting, praise and glorification of God, in Islam) the more I create an even bigger stain on the surface under the Tasbih showing the hopelessness of removing the stain. This repetitive action depicts the process of feeling as though I need to cleanse myself from ‘Barbie’. The object (nail polish) that stains me is the object I desire most. The object (tissue) that is used to cleanse me clashes with my desire (nail polish) and does not cleanse me but creates an even bigger mess. In the end of this hopeless struggle I am left to lie in a pool of chaos.

B. armoured fulla, Goldie Locks and Steel Wool on Prayer Mat C. cleaning fullas mess, Video Projected on Prayer Mat, 163 x 218 cm

L AY L A A JACOBS

playful fulla, Pom Pom Balls on Prayer Mat, 108 x 68 cm

‘FULLA’

A. be dazzled fulla, Be Dazzled Beads on Prayer Mat. 108 x 68 cm B. hairy fulla, Hair Extensions on Prayer Mat. 108 x 68 cm C. manicured fulla, Nail Polish on Prayer Mat. 108 x 68 cm D. f u l l a s p a r t y n a i l s , N a i l P o l i s h o n P r a y e r M a t . 1 0 8 x 6 8 c m

90 ‘This is where I leave you’

LINDI JANSEN VAN RENSBURG This body of work is motivated and informed by my ongoing internal conversations about nature and longing, a longing for the lost self. In my explorations into poetry, stories and myths, I am led time and again to the natural environment, with its very pure and natural patterns, among which I wander with an anticipation to connect to something that is not yet articulated, but longs to be unveiled.

Through the use of the colour green in all its guises, signifying to me regeneration, promise and rebirth, I represent landscapes which mark moments in time in my life that I have felt a transcendental connection to life in an omniscient sense.

This process or journey mediates an internal experience through an external representation of nature – inner spaces become external – and I can connect to a physical space of personal meaning.

These landscapes represent a personal history largely unknown to others. Thus I become a ‘giver of meaning’ of these landscapes, attempting to tap into the primordial essence of things through my lived experience, producing art that is my truth, but could also possibly declare a truth that is collectively resonant.

The power of my imagination and the projection of my consciousness into the natural landscapes and spaces inform my identity and seek to express or reveal the ‘mystical’ elements that are retained in the human experience of nature. My work is process-driven, with painstaking attention to detail in an attempt to explore inner secrets by ‘hiding them in plain sight’. To do this I use the concept of camouflage as it occurs naturally, as a way to embed the growth of self in the artworks, sometimes apparent and sometimes not. C A. Omega, colour etching, 33.5 × 43 cm B . J o s e p h C o n r a d ’s J u n g l e B o o k , c o l o u r e t c h i n g a n d t h r e a d , 3 3 . 5 × 4 3 c m C . To t u m , m i x e d m e d i a s c u l p t u r e

D. B a l l a d f o r a W a n d e r e r I I I , m i x e d m e d i a o n c a n v a s , 6 9 Ã&#x2014; 8 4 . 5 c m

LINDI JA N S E N VA N R E N S B U R G

The small blue trembles in the shadow of the green Rif, hand-dyed, knitted linen and silk

‘THIS IS WHERE I L E AV E YO U ’

Green, screen-print, 32 × 45 cm

94 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A Body of Wasteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

ALEXANDRA KACZMAREK Piles and piles in heaps, on heaps, in pink and green: whatever was in the bag disappears; down a throat or down the sink, but the bag remains.

conditioned to insufficiency anxiety and plagued with shortages and waste where abundance used to be.

The cycle of consumption manifests in human exchange; you produce something; I buy it. A momentary pleasure before whatever made-to-break product does just that. Nothing is ever enough.

Material objects and images become the point of departure for analysis, value and hierarchy. Objects define our identities and become the tools we use to circumnavigate our human experience; we keep the objects that keep us.

The ideology of the growth society is internalised through consumption to psychological effect. Consumption based on constructed needs results in exclusion, distinction and differentiation. Society is

The useless and artificial abundance permeates society itself: it pervades interactions where relations are reciprocally simulated between people. In a world surrounded by dysfunctional objects a deeper

A A. Intoxicated, Video, Dimensions Variable

psychological need for evermore will prevail. Does the obsolete in our material world create a sense of insecurity in the real one?

Body of Waste was born of a personal revolt toward parallels of waste and abundance in contemporary society. Each day a temperature-controlled truck is fueled by petroleum to reach multiple locations at which it deposits a temperature-controlled quantity of artificially green and pink heavyweight plastic bags filled with ice. Monumental and eternal waste is produced for a single serving of an ice-cold beverage. The consumption system; run on greed and gasoline.

through which the work is viewed positions plastic as an essential element of throwaway culture. The work attempts to reconstruct feelings of angst and frustration while investigating the dichotomy of being overwhelmed and simultaneously never having enough. The viewer is invited to inhabit the work as a physical, haptic experience and to feel the deluge of emotions and insecurities triggered by suffocating colour and artificial material. The system of consumption controls and manipulates. Body of Waste suggests not that one can escape the system but rather that awareness may become a device through which we might begin to counteract the insidious repercussions of our throwaway society. The consumer society; A world of plastic goods and plastic hearts.

Reuse and materiality drive this project; plastic bags become new objects inciting new values, items of apparel and entire immersive environments. Figuratively, they flow into printed form through the recycling of colour. As consumption subsumes social practice, the pink and green have come to saturate this body of work. The artificial tint D B . P e r e n n i a l ( M y m o t h e r â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s g a r d e n ) ( D e t a i l ) , P h o t o g r a p h i c P r i n t , 7 2 x 5 6 c m a p p r o x C. The Hedge (An exercise in mass production) (Detail), Plastic and Wood, dimensions variable D. F r i l l s 2 , P l a s t i c a n d t h r e a d , 4 8 x 7 5 c m

ALEXANDRA KACZMAREK

Object Print (1-16), Relief Print on Munken, Dimensions Variable

‘A B O D Y OF WASTE’

TOP: Limited Edition 2 (Detail), Photographic Print, 52.5 x 35 cm BOTTOM: Site of Spectacular Alienation 1, Plastic and Aluminium, Dimensions Variable

98 ‘Trimester of Abjection’

JU EUN KIM The labour and birth, the thrilling and gruesome affairs are subconsciously diminished and dulled by the idea of being blessed with a blissful miracle of a suckling form. Watching the sweat-soaked mother screaming her lungs out, forcing another part of herself is often related to expression of delight and joy and a celebration. The nativity is so ironically comprehended compared to what is actually happening behind the white sheet hung over her legs covering the sight of the violent and bloody ejection. My thought on what the most important aspect in the event of ‘birth’ is neither the mother nor the sex nor the father. It is the infant. I became fascinated with the idea of birth and the development of the ‘subject’ that is ejected. Metamorphosis series explores the process of physical and psychological growing and aging. In my comprehension, aging involves bodily and mental draining, fleshing, burning, smothering, baring and bleeding of a subject that is unblemished and naive into an object that is defiled and sagacious through the process of abjection. The event of birth and events after it, such as development of a subject and ‘consuming’ an identity are made of different forms of abjection, transfiguration and at the same time, degradation, a subject experiencing a process of abjection. Rebirth series is based on spiritual birth. Contrasted with the physical birth, in Christianity to be reborn, the second birth is to experience the regeneration and conversion of one’s spirit ( John 3:5). Anchored by spiritual martyrs, Stephan, Paul and Thomas, Rebirth series discloses the assimilation of death and life through unveiling the core of crucifixion and redemption. Clouded significance of beguiling act of bloodshed, burning and falling prevail over the agony and torment that was encountered in the name of Christ. The body of works merges together to uncover the intention of a violent transformation of conversion – the divine rebirth. Trimester of Abjection focuses on unveiling the term, birth – the physical, psychological and spiritual beginnings and endings using three elements – water, fire and blood. A

A. Metamorphosis, Video Still, 3:30 minutes B. Rebirth series, Video Stills, 5 minutes

100

JU EUN KIM

T h o m a s , t h e M a r t y r, V i d e o S t i l l f r o m R e b i r t h S e r i e s , 5 m i n u t e s

‘TRIMESTER OF ABJECTION’

S t e p h a n , t h e M a r t y r, V i d e o S t i l l f r o m R e b i r t h S e r i e s , 5 m i n u t e s

101

102

MARIANNE THESEN LAW Some key phrases: Impending sense of doom A firenado, an earthquake, a whirlpool, a small explosion A person who can make the leaves fly off of trees The crisis of late-stage capitalism and I Don’t Want To Sell You Anything Avoiding phone calls / Fear A snake can give birth in two ways but only eats eggs one way All the ghosts in the entire history of the world Magic – a spell to bind and a lucky charm Death That feeling when you look inside the brain cavity That feeling when the dead make themselves known, online How much money should I spend on this thing Fully automated art production Discourse (and words are just funny shapes; and language is just funny sounds) Data degradation / this cellphone photograph looks like something out of National Geographic The way William Gibson describes the internet as a place you go A wind too strong to breathe in A wind strong enough to wipe your voice off of recordings A body of water just large enough to drown in Hitting the ejector seats and being shot out to Mars Flying too close to the red planet Praxis: Time travelling to kill my own ancestors How many times can you poke at the membrane before it ruptures How many days can you go without looking in the mirror How much chaos can you create in a single frame How much can you obfuscate before people get bored and leave before they’ve seen the whole thing and how long can you sustain a recurring motif ? A

A . Tu n i c N y l o n , D i m e n s i o n s Va r i a b l e

103

B. Cat Video (Working title), Video, Dimensions Variable C. Los Angeles is so strange, she says, Video, Dimensions Variable

104

MARIANNE THESEN L AW

Prompt, Video, Dimensions Variable

MARIANNE THESEN L AW

T O P : A p o e m a b o u t a r t s t u d e n t s m a k i n g w o r k a b o u t d e a t h t h a t b e c a m e a p o e m a b o u t d e a t h , D i g i t a l I m a g e / Te x t B O T T O M : ( O r, a f i s s u r e b e t w e e n t h e l o b e s o f t h e b r a i n ) , D i g i t a l i m a g e

105

106

A . To w a r d s a B r i l l i a n t E n d , I n k j e t P r i n t o n B a r y t a , 1 0 . 1 6 x 1 2 . 7 c m

107 ‘Images from Before; Towards a Brilliant End’

KYU SANG LEE

Images f rom Before; Towards a Brilliant End is an interrogation of anxiety spurred by finite time and fate.

While defining anxiety as an emotion caused by eventuality of death, it brings us to the state of ‘dasein’, or the reason of being, where the self becomes more insignificant and the other person is not merely confined as an ‘other’. Thus participation of viewers and their experience of the artworks is as necessary as the artist ’s individual experience in this exhibition. Kyu Sang Lee’s artworks extends an invitation to multifarious cultural spectrum, from Western classical music to the post-modern, contemporary soundworks, from philosophy, Russian literature, to the modern literature. His work questions the diverse tensions between a community and the self, beliefs and subjectivity, memory and oblivion, and time and eternity.

B. The Festival of Insignificance, Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle, Metal Pins, Dimensions Variable C. The Acceptance of Time, Wooden Structure, 2.500 x 3.000 x 1.000 cm

108

K YU S A N G LEE

TOP: In the Place and Time, A Single Channel Video, Dimensions Variable BOTTOM: Jericho, A Single Channel Video, Dimensions available

‘IMAGES FROM BEFORE; TOWARDS A BRILLIANT END’

Self Por traits with Madonna Figure Behind White Paint, Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle, 1.100 x 1.400cm

109

110 ‘Tillage’

SINEAD MAHARAJ As I stand from behind my camera lens, composing an image, I begin an exploration into the visual language I am presented with that has lead me to compose such a framing within my lens. The Anthropological notion, ‘The Cultivation of Man’; by Bernard Fonlon, 1965, researched how man can be tilled and simultaneously be the tiller upon that of himself and others. Man cultivates other men to conduct themselves in accordance with the social environment, simultaneously perpetuating the ideals of conduct himself. Parallels between this notion and my exploration of the visual languages presented to me, and how I have to come to process my understandings, are investigated through metaphorical elements of light; roots; photography; grid systems and grass. An investigation into light: its influences on natural biological systems and on plant matter. How plants through light grow certain ways, and how this same light has influenced my chosen medium of photography. From the beginning of photography with William Henry Fox Talbot and his understanding of light as ‘The Pencil of Nature’ as a way to paint with light, I take on a further personal investigation within the metaphor of light and its transitions on biological matter. C

C A . W o v e n , E x p i r e d P h o t o g r a p h i c P a p e r, P i n e w o o d , 6 4 x 3 2 c m B . S e l f P o r t r a i t , W h e a t G r a s s ; D r a f t P a p e r, P i n e w o o d , 3 ( 4 0 x 4 0 c m )

111

Through an increasing awareness (and in a sense being enlightened) I have become aware of how I have been cultivated through the visual language that surrounds me and how I am simultaneously perpetuating this cultivation onto others by submissively acting without knowing. How theroots of what I see, and understand are more than just what is held within the framing, but are also the academic realms of how I have been tilled, in the anthropological sense, to become a certain type of person. How my increasing awareness through this investigation has lead me to ponder how one is cultivated to be what society can accept as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;decent â&#x20AC;&#x2122; person, and how through my perpetuation of my own medium of photography, and those of the people around me, have too been tilled by their own cultivation on a social media platform, that has seen being the rising hierarchy of visual languages.

I deliberate through metaphors and scrambled thoughts, how my comprehension of the universal visual language I am exposed to, is to a sort of tillage factor, including those that have prefaced the composition Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m framing from behind the camera. I begin to understand the hierarchy of my thoughts through the status-building environment we have curated for ourselves. The conversation continues as I become increasingly aware of the cultivation from academics and the social media platform we situate ourselves in, and their influences upon why I want to frame the self-portrait.

I question whether this following of the light in our growth is aligned to the systematic grid formation of society or if we follow our own path through the presence and absence of light. My rising knowledge of how the visual language around me is rooted in more than what is at eye point, to cultivate a culture of status. There is no finite conclusion to my investigation but rather the processing of an individual becoming aware of the visual language around her and how that has an influence on a conversation about how she presents and grows in a world that seems to be so mapped out. C . E n g i n e O i l , C a r t r i d g e P a p e r, P i n e W o o d , 5 ( 8 0 x 3 0 c m ) D. E n g i n e O i l , C a r t r i d g e P a p e r, P i n e W o o d , 5 ( 8 0 x 3 0 c m )

112

FA N I E BUYS

W o v e n , I l f o r d P h o t o g r a p h i c P a p e r, P i n e w o o d , 6 4 x 6 4 c m

‘ S I N C E R E LY WITH LOVE’

E x p i r e d P h o t o g r a p h i c P a p e r, P i n e W o o d , 2 ( 6 4 x 3 2 c m )

113

114 ‘Lessons in Solitude’

CHARLIE MARTINSON My project is an engagement with the concepts of process and materiality within the context of the painting tradition. My work is a mixture of plein air painting and intuitive mark making; using a wide range of media to engage each surface.

centre needs to be shaken in order for the process to be initiated, but at the same time, production of work is not possible without a level of meditation and introspection being involved. Furthermore, the process whereby one is in solitude and without solitude is mirrored in the production of the work. In exploring the boundaries of solitude the practice of letter writing and observing the landscape became the starting point for multiple works. The process of writing a letter is laborious, slow, and intimate, which echoes elements of my project. Letter writing is a private experience, which involves proximity and intimacy to interpret. Letters are written with a particular person in mind, but I, as the writer, intentionally obscure the original message so that it cannot be read in the works. These letters are not necessarily always sent but are used as a method of sifting through various emotions that become processed but seem to remain unnamed. Multiple works stem from a specific memory, or event that is not revealed in the installation that the viewer will experience. Impressionists’ attempt at making work appear un-composed is taken a step further, memories and representations become mere outlines or palimpsests. Memories of people and landscapes

‘Lessons in Solitude’ describes an attempt to be autodidactic and productive while solitary. Solitude induces anxiety, which can paralyse the creative process. However, the content of this exhibition merely stems from anxiety, and does not necessarily explore or comment on anxiety itself. The works stem from a process of anxious production that becomes meditative. As both elements are necessary in the process of my work I have begun to question the binary perception of anxiety as being bad and meditation being good, and have begun to acknowledge that both of these elements are necessary in the production of my work. One’s

are left over in unreadable words and marks. Each piece stems from an attempt to replicate or process a memory, but methods of description are abandoned

A. Layer (Detail) B. Impressions from Silvermine (Detail)

115 and the origin of the memory becomes abstracted. Memories of people, places, and events meld together throughout the process. The process of making the works have a certain physical intensity: textures are manipulated, words are written (and erased), surfaces become fragmented and covered in multiple layers of paint. This kind of art-making becomes a method of research on what it means to me to make art. Is it for its representative quality (no), is it in order to express myself (perhaps), or is it a form of knowledge making and recording that exists merely in memory? An obfuscated history of memory (of people, places, feelings) that cannot (or will not) be framed starts to appear.

absorbed by their frames. Memory inhabits a space, and determines the energy of a room. This kind of record keeping, for me, is dealt with by writing letters, drawing people, landscapes, and collaging these experiences together. It is an attempt to reconcile a culmination of fragments of memories and impressions

that stem from both collective and personal histories. This paradox of multiple memories and interpretations of the world becomes ever-present: ‘Fragments are unendurable’ as Woolf ’s Dalloway says. In the questioning of these representations and culminations of multiple methods and modes of production, process art comes to the fore of my practice. The incidentals, the unintentional marks that are made, are also a part of my practice. ‘Uncertainty itself becomes the new rule of the game’ ( Jaschko, S. & Evers, L.). The process of questioning how I would like my art to be read, how I would like it to look becomes never-ending, and thus the process becomes the work.

A personal history, a collective history – they are constructed by and exist in the minds and writings of people. Aristotle comments on history; that history is boundless and unframed. As soon as ‘an history ’ is written, narrated, depicted, it becomes a story, a representation. Though this method of record-keeping is necessary in order to construct a collective identity, this body of work is an attempt to acknowledge that these methods of constructing history are not allencompassing, and that there are elements of our experience that are incommunicable. The experiences that have been had turn into palimpsests, ready for other marks to be made, and other pictures and frames to engulf them. The works are not framed, but

C. Layer (Detail) D. O s m o s e a n d d i s a p p e a r ( D e t a i l ) E. Slide, Inside, Found Wood, House Paint, Canvas, 74 x 70 cm

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CHARLIE M A RT I N S O N

Layer, House Paint, Hessian, Thread, Beads, Twigs, Cardboard. 100 x 175 cm

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;LESSONS IN SOLITUDE

Osmose and disappear, Hessian, House Paint, Plaster of Paris. 120 x 118 cm

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118

A A. Lebone la baswagadi (lamp of the widows), Video Performance B. Serala, her hope my success, Cement, Wood, Metal, Wire, Found Material, Soil, Dimension Variable

119 ‘Pinagare’

MATLHOGONOLO MATLHAPE Pinagare is a body of work that is driven by the concept of mourning for both the young and the old in relation to death, or after losing the loved one. The body of work borrowed its name from a pole (pinagare) found in the middle of a traditional mud house which supports all the roofing rafters. This makes reference to the widow who sustains all the weight of the challenges of losing a spouse and having to keep on with life for the benefit of her young ones. Pinagare is an effort to memorialise the death of my father, Mr Samuel Shimane Matlhape, in juxtaposition with monumentalising my mother’s hardship after his passing.

the widow for the arduous task of self reliance since death has claimed the breadwinner and the head of the household. It alludes to the idea of death and rebirth of a widow. Serala is also part of the Pinagare body of work that vehemently speaks of the hardship, endurance and strength of these widows through the interplay of cement, metal, soil and found objects. The installation speaks more of the domestic labour of a widow as an effort to support her family. Letsema, on the other hand, is an installation that echoes the idea of a field which is the basis of every widow woman’s hopes, particularly those who do not have a job. The installation comprises three types of agricultural tool (sickles, pangas and hoes), also giving reference to people through the interplay of cement, metal and wood. It echoes the idea of commercial labour in fields and plantations, day and night, to keep life going for their young ones. The two installations memorialise and monumentalise the hardship of life experienced by a mother and her offspring after the passing of a breadwinner in my family. Moreover as an artist who has never experienced a father figure in the family, a chance to mourn his death or a chance to perform the mourning rituals, this is a platform I use to memorialise the death of an unknown father, making peace with closing that gap, and celebrating my mother’s effort and hardship to sustain us.

My father died in year 1986 when I was at the age of two, leaving my mother Mrs Rebecca Samuel Matlhape with ten children and no job. He was the only breadwinner of the family which left us subject to poverty after his passing. This body of work explores the concept of mourning surrounding ritual practices of widowhood and performances in Setswana. The aim of the project is to immortalise these ritual practices through a video performance titled ‘Lebone la Baswagadi’ in which the artist uses her body to explore the vitality of these practices. George Tasie (2003) regards these rituals as the efforts to prepare Ta s i e , G . I . K . 2 0 1 3 . A f r i c a n W i d o w h o o d R i t e s ; A B a n e o r B o o m f o r t h e A f r i c a n W o m a n . International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. 3(1):155–162

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M AT L H O G O N O L O M AT L H A P E

‘PINAGARE’

Letsema, Cement, Wood, Metal, Soil, Dimension Variable

121

122 ‘re:membering’

SAARA MILLWARD All photographs are momento mori – Susan Sontag Surrounded by family in a small room, the smell of camphor dense in the air, body temperature at a level just below comfort. Surrounded in a small fluorescent room, it smells sterile, a family mourns the loss of a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a friend. The inadvertently swift experience with death, does not allow for closure to happen in a natural way. What is it? The erasure of someone, the gravity her possessions take on, the anger, and melancholy and the unknown. Where do you go from here?

deceased’s belongings. Therefore allowing myself to be thrown into subconscious commemoration in every way possible. The Oxford dictionary defines the origin of the word ‘expired’ as ‘from Latin “expirare” “breathe out”.’ Originating from the Latin phrase ‘to breathe out’, the expired photographic paper, being the predominant media, finds itself in sync with the subject matter. Having a nature of its own it starts to embody the character of a limpid body, in washed out greys with silver linings. The time and delicacy needed for the processing of the shadowgrams, and its materiality displays the sensitivity and attention required. A key component is the video and the camphor scent in the space. The ritual of crushing camphor for cleansing the deceased’s body, is a moment endured and reflected in the loop of the video. This process was filmed throughout the duration of the traditionally read prayer for the deceased. The smell of camphor in the Islamic culture is predominantly associated with death, albeit a calming scent for some, which influenced my decision to display it in the space. It also speaks to the everyday routine that remains the same, entirely unaffected by the monumental change after losing a loved one. It all becomes a waiting game, waiting for something to happen. It’s not a conscious act of waiting for something, rather, an intrinsic emotion that merely occurs.

This is about a cycle influenced by personal experiences with the covert and untimely nature of death. Through a series of shadowgrams and prints I retraced the life of my late grandmother through the use of analogue photography as well as modern digital media. The use of analogue photography and development plays a large role in the creation of my body of work, as it allows for a slower, more intimate creative process. It allows me to spend time with each image, lovingly and caringly. In turn, it removes the instantaneousness of the digital process, but still initially relies on it to capture the transient moment [refer to Facing & Hem, 2016]. The book 100 is a representation of my family’s culture to wait one hundred days before touching the

It is human nature to long for the physical connection and presence of those we mourn, and even though we psychologically know that it is not possible to hope for the same experience as you’re used to when you are holding an item of clothing close. Yet we do it anyway. It is not about the desire to turn back the clock, rather it’s about where you find yourself pondering one quiet afternoon. Wandering from thought to thought, connecting the links in the chain until you come across a moment that leads you to her door. It is about absence in the present moment, and losing more than a person, it’s also losing every moment you could have shared with one more person you love.

A. Sunset Prayer, B & W Expired Fibre Print, 40.2 x 30 cm

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B. Arched Sleeve, B & W Expired Fibre Print Analogue Photo - Manipulation, 26.5 x 27.4 cm C . Tr i m m i n g s , B & W E x p i re d F i b re P r i n t A n a l o g u e P h o to - M a n i p u l a t i o n , 2 6 . 5 x 2 7 . 4 c m D. L o o k i n g D o w n , B & W E x p i r e d F i b r e P r i n t A n a l o g u e P h o t o - M a n i p u l a t i o n , 2 6 . 5 x 2 7 . 4 c m E. The Moment the Bird Stood Still, B & W Expired Fibre Print, 40.2 x 30 cm

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SAARA M I L LW A R D

T O P : P a t t e r n 1 – 4 , S h a d o w g r a m , B & W E x p i r e d F i b r e P a p e r, 6 0 x 1 5 0 - 1 7 5 c m B O T T O M : C l o t h e d 1 – 3 , S h a d o w g r a m , B & W E x p i r e d F i b r e P a p e r, 6 0 x 1 5 0 - 1 7 5 c m

SAARA M I L LW A R D

D o nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; t D ro p Yo u r P u r s e i n t h e Po n d . B & W E x p i re d F i b re P r i n t . 4 0 . 2 x 3 0 c m

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A. Untitled, Arduino Micro, MG995 Servo, Laser Cut Wooden Basin, Polar Fleece, Stuffing B . U n t i t l e d , E l e c t r o n i c D o g T o y s , T w i s t e d E l e c t r i c a l C a b l e , P o l a r F l e e c e , M o h a i r, S t u f f i n g

127 ‘A New Nature’

KYM MITCHELL Ever ything that deceives may be said to enchant. – Plato The evolution of robotics gave birth to a new form of digital culture which allowed for mechanical assistance in various fields such as medicine, construction, etc., but also provided companionship within the household. Children’s playrooms, by the late 1990s, were presented with digital ‘creatures’ whose settings allowed for them to demand affection and which possessed interactive properties. Life with simulation is the main theme I have explored in my work. Living in a world where we are insecure in our relationships with others and fearful of intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships but also protect ourselves from them at the same time.

organisms we are familiar with. The Furbies’ colourful, decorative exterior, for instance, is attractive but in no way authentic and yet we still gravitate towards this. A new toy community has begun to emerge where our attention for such commodities has shifted away from the real and more towards the fantasy, thereby making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. My project looks at reconstructing entirely new mechanically-driven outlandish forms which speaks to the idea of letting go of the authentic. Are we drawn to building a new nature purely for entertainment purposes as opposed to preserving appreciation for the one already in existence?

Robotic toys create an illusion of camaraderie without the demand of friendship. It is purely companionship for convenience with an on and off switch attached. Children can imagine these mechanical creatures as ‘living’ because of their mimicry movements and the familiar features of various entities within the natural world. However, with toys such as Furbies, a different line is crossed on the spectrum of connectivity as the appearance of these simulated creatures is more alienlike with only a few features which subtly hint at

Technology is most appealing when we are most vulnerable and reassures us of connectivity in ways that we can comfortably govern ourselves. We can control our imagination but we cannot control the world and my work illustrates how we are so quick to substitute authenticity for the thrill of fantasy.

C . U n t i t l e d , 4 m m A l u m i n i u m W i r e , P o l a r F l e e c e , M o h a i r, S t u f f i n g , S t a i n l e s s S t e e l P u l l e y s D. U n t i t l e d , P o l a r F l e e c e B l a n k e t , M o h a i r, S t u f f i n g

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KYM MITCHELL

Untitled, MG995 Servos, Three Pair Mylar Screened Cables, Coated Chipboard Base and Arms, Polar Fleece, Stuffing

‘A N E W N AT U R E ’

Untitled, Control Unit, Arduino Uno, Three Pair Mylar Screened Cables, Male and Female Jumper Wire, USB Power Cable, Polar Fleece, Stuffing

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130 ‘Inside Out’

SHADAI LEA MOONSAMY Inside Out deals with the deep-rooted patriarchal beliefs of India that still exist in the 21st century Indian diaspora. It explores the issues and challenges that I and many women experience within the Indian community. The colourful sarees that have been integrated into the work carry emotions and tell stories about the women who once wore them. The purpose of Inside Out is not simply to express internal feelings openly but also allow people outside the closely-knit community in.

The saree is an important symbol in this body of work. The saree is traditional attire in the Indian culture. The saree is also believed to be a fabric that is ‘pure and sacred’. After India gained its independence, the saree became the emblem of national identity and unity. Ironically, the purpose of the saree was to keep teenage girls and women both comfortable in the heat and to look decent. This is interesting because from my experience and from the opinion of other women the saree, which is on average 6 metres long is hot, heavy and uncomfortable. It is also very revealing. The heaviness of the saree becomes a metaphor for the oppression and lack of worth many Indian women feel in the Indian community. The revealing areas of the saree are a symbol of the vulnerability of these women. The weight and style in which a saree is tied restricts movement which reflects the restrictions many women face. The theme of restriction is present in all of the artworks. The artworks are made from sarees which have been used previously by women. This adds to the heaviness of the garments as each saree carries a history of its own. Each of the 50 sarees represents a women in my community and their story. The sarees that are present speak for the women in my family and community that could not follow their dreams. My First Doll House! is a reflection of my own doll house as a child. I was only given the furnishings for the kitchen as it was seen as the most important part of the house.

The writings of Thavamani Pillay, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed are strong narratives in my work. The book Inside Indian Indenture: A South African Story, 1860 –1914 by Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed is a crucial text for helping to understand the history of the Indian Indentured. Their research explores the reasons why the Indians came to South Africa and how this decision affected the history of every Indian living in South Africa today.

A. Untitled, Wood and Saree, 0.5 x 0.1 m

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B. My First Doll House!, Wood, 1.2 x 1 m

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SHADAI LEA MOONSAMY

TOP: Untitled, Saree and Foam BOTTOM: Untitled, Wood and Saree

‘INSIDE OUT’

L e t ’s P l a y D r e s s U p ! , W o o d a n d S a r e e

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A . M a h t a a b ( m o o n l i g h t ) , V i d e o A n i m a t i o n S t i l l , 1 ’’ 2 1 ’

135 ‘Al Wadha’ah Clean and Bright’

MARIAM MOOSA The word Al Wadha’ah is the Arabic word for ‘Clean and Bright’. Al Wadha’ah is a personal exploration of the five pillars of Islam (or the foundation of Islam) as a physical and spiritual cleanse for an individual. Al Wadha’ah attempts to convey the beauty and peace of the five pillars of Islam. Furthermore, Al Wadha’ah is a personal exploration of the connections between pattern, geometry, structure and the systems of the universe in relation to the five pillars of Islam.

through the scale, a reference is made to systems of measurement and monetary value. The pillar of saum (fasting) is a cycle determined by the lunar calendar. Therefore, I explore the pillar of saum through analysing the different phases of the moon, which signals the start and end of a ‘cleanse’. The cycle of the moon is also a reference to astronomy, the cosmos, and the telling of time. The pillar of hajj (pilgrimage) may be viewed as an encompassment of all five pillars. To perform hajj we need to have belief in tawhid and fulfill our obligations towards salaah, zakaah, and saum. The pillar of hajj is explored through utilising Islamic geometric patterns to create a sense of the motion around the ka’bah during tawaaf (the circumambulation of the ka’bah). During the ritual of hajj the location of Mecca and Medina are extremely important. Therefore, the ritual of hajj is also explored as a reference to the geographic. Furthermore, the motion of the circumambulation of the ka’bah may be extended to other systems within the universe and thus is also explored as a reference to the biological and the science behind the cosmos.

The pillar of tawhid refers to the belief in Oneness, which underlies everything within the world. I explore the pillar of tawhid through the connections that neurons make as a reference to the unity which underpins the structure within us. Therefore, a reference to the biological is made. The pillar of salaah (prayer) is explored as a ‘cleanse’ through its meditative quality. From the washing which takes place during wudhu (ablution) to the physical act of praying salaah, a state of a physical and spiritual cleanse is experienced. Metaphorically, praying five times a day at appointed times is also a reference to the telling of time. The pillar of zakaah (charity) refers to the purification of wealth to bring about balance and harmony. Therefore zakaah is a ‘c leanse’ of the spiritual self through monetar y means. By exploring zakaah

Al-Wadha’ah is an effort to create an experiential space in which the beauty and peace of the five pillars of Islam may be conveyed to the viewer. The notion of ‘cleanliness’ is explored through utilising soap as a sculptural medium. Furthermore, by presenting soap in the colour gold, the viewer is forced to question the value which we assign to soap, and the value we assign to gold.

B . Ta w a a z u n ( b a l a n c e ) , S o a p B l o c k s o n a S c a l e w i t h B r o n z e W e i g h t s , S o a p B l o c k s : D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e , S c a l e – 2 4 x 7 x 1 5 c m C . G h a s a l a ( w a s h ) , V i d e o S t i l l , 3 ’’ 3 6 ’

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MARIAM MOOSA

Rawaabitun (connections), Etchings on Fabriano Rosapina, 24.9 x 20 cm

‘A L W A D H A’A H CLEAN AND BRIGHT’

Safeenah (vessel), Soap, Fibre Glass & Gold Paint, 35 x 23 cm

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138 ‘A Search for Clarity’

AARON SAMUEL MULENGA during Professor Martinez-Ruiz’s classes ‘New Art, New Perspective’ that I was introduced to the nkisi nkondi in academia. I was initially conflicted within myself as much of my upbringing educated me to believe that anything seen as deviant to Christianity was taboo. In order to understand God from a nondenominational Christian perspective, I chose to explore the Holy Trinity because I feel it best explains who God is. The Trinity consists of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible is not always clear on how the three personalities of the Trinity are unique yet exactly the same (as each of them is understood to be God). The one moment in the Bible (1989) where all three entities of the Trinity are explicitly shown appearing at the same time on earth is at the Baptism of Jesus. In Matthew 3:13-17 immediately after Jesus is baptised, the Holy Spirit comes upon him in the form of a dove. God the Father’s voice is heard from heaven confirming Jesus as his son with whom he is pleased.

What do the Holy Trinity, the nkisi nkondi have in common? During my undergrad, I sought to understand the history of Christianity on the African continent prior to the missionary project or that of colonialism. I used the symbols of the Holy Trinity and the nkisi nkondi (which is a religious object, of the Kongo people in the South of Africa, imbued with spirits) to aid my understanding of who God is perceived to be in different parts of Africa. I have chosen to focus my research on the periods of the 1st to 15th century. Prior to contact with the scholarship of Professor Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz in my third year of university, art history seemed to offer little room for a scholar wanting to explore cultural and religious beliefs of African people without ‘othering’ or relegating them to the realm of primitive and uncivilised objects. The hierarchy in art history is one I intend to destabilise by challenging the views of Eurocentric art paradigms especially as they relate to the African continent and particularly to Christianity. It was B A . Tr i n i t y S t u d y 3 , ( Wo u n d e d f o r o u r Tra n s g re s s i o n s ) C e ra m i c , 3 1 x 1 6 . 5 x 2 0 c m B. Nkisi Study 1, Ceramic, Hessian, Cow Horn, Nails, Animal Skin, 39 x 22 x 32 cm

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Once I began my research on the nkisi I started to make sculptures that referenced the nkisi object. My sculptures serve as a reference to the minkisi (plural) I have studied and act as tools to display my findings visually. The act of making these sculptures has formed part of my process towards understanding God better because I have worked through a procedure that I imagine a nganga would go through in creating an nkisi. I see the nkisi as a useful motif towards understanding spirituality and God better because it is a spiritual object that has originated from an African context over a number of centuries, thus showing the spiritual connection that people in Africa have had with God, independent of Western notions of spirituality.

the conversation that individuals have about the Christian faith and who God is. I see my current work as a starting point to a larger conversation that I intend to build upon as I move forward in my career because I believe Christianityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true history in Africa is yet to be uncovered in popular discourse.

I use hessian/burlap material to make the bulk of my sculptures, integrating processed wood, wire, leather and rope to give the desired finish to my art. Hessian is made from tree fibre and I intend to make works that have a strong connection to the earth, this also makes reference to the nkisi objects, as Martinez-Ruiz (2016) revealed in an interview, stating that the wood used to make the nkisi is a connection back to God and also to the earth. I chose to use photography to depict the Trinity by using three black women to represent the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. My intention is to subvert the imagery used in the Christian church to depict the Trinity, in order to broaden D C. Exhibition in Progress D. T r i n i t y S t u d y 1 , C e r a m i c , 3 9 x 2 2 x 3 2 c m

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AARON SAMUEL MULENGA

N a t w i k a t a A m a k u m b i , H e s s i a n , Wo o d , Tre e B ra n c h e s , B u n t i n g , 3 0 0 x 7 0 x 2 1 0 c m

‘A S E A R C H FOR CLARITY’

A m a k a , P h o t o g r a p h i c P r i n t o n E p s o n P a p e r, 4 2 x 2 9 c m

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142 ‘Salvaged Citations’

STEPHANI MÜLLER Whatever is struck by the allegorical intention is severed from the contexts of life: it is at once destroyed and conserved. Allegory holds fast to ruins. It offers the image of petrif ied unrest. – Walter Benjamin 1 Eduardo Cadava introduces his text, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History, with an epigraph from Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay ‘The Weight of a Thought’, which I originally, erroneously, translated as, ‘the photograph shows the recipe of thought,’ when it should have read, ‘the photograph shows the reality of thought’. 1 Given this body of work is motivated by an etymological appeal it seems an appropriate error given it relates to the untranslatability of what Nancy describes as the ‘trace deposited in language’. 2 Gesturing to these citations as traces or threads, I urge the viewer to mirror my own approach to artmaking by following them like a recipe; equal parts direction and improvisation.

present even as they deliver traces of their past in signs of use and wear … It’s the paradox of things appearing while disappearing, apprehended just in time, and in time’.3 This dialectic between conservation and destruction, preservation and decay, remains and ruins follows Benjamin’s model of allegory as an image of petrified unrest and forms the conceptual underpinning for my body of work. Accordingly, this exhibition is anchored by a medium and material that is a principle component in historic photography, an historic commodity of note and an ingredient we season recipes with every day: salt. The parallel to Benjamin becomes poignantly apt when we consider, firstly that its two compounds preserve life; chloride as essential to digestion and respiration, and sodium as necessitated in order to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses and move muscles, including the heart; and secondly that salt, like history and photography, simultaneously preserves and corrodes.

Reflecting on the writings of Walter Benjamin, Cadava’s text articulates a conception of history through photography’s relation to language and light, likening a preface to a photographic negative that can only be developed later and therefore exists within the interstices of time. Thus, photographs, can be described as citations ‘salvaged from the flux of time, from the past and from their own condition of being past; they are always of the C A . P o r t o f C a p e To w n , S a l t P r i n t o n 3 2 0 g H a h n Ve n e t o 2 7 x 2 5 c m B. Velddrif, Salt Print on 320 g Hahn Veneto, 48 x 52 cm C . S a l t S a m p l e 1 . 1 K h o i s a n Tra d i n g C o ( P t y ) . Ve l d d r i f , S a l t & G l a s s , 1 0 x 1 0 c m D. S a l t B a k e d B u o y , P l a s t e r C a s t , 5 0 x 6 0 c m

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Discourse on Salt: A Mineral Mandate: Salvaged Citations explores the history, uses and conceptual implications of a substance produced by the reaction of an acid with a base. When sodium and chlorine react they become NaCl, a mineral more commonly known as salt. Given that salt is such a staple culinary and chemical ingredient, so commonly used, so easy to acquire and so inexpensive, it seems hyperbolic to imagine that since the onset of civilization up until a little over a century ago ‘salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history’. 4 Since the Latin for salt ‘sal’, the French for pay ‘solde’, and the word ‘soldier’ are intimately related, the etymological origin and development of the word ‘salt’ gestures to an historical legacy of a chemical compound ‘worth its weight in gold’. Accordingly, in Ancient Rome soldiers were often paid in salt, hence the term ‘salary’ and the idiom ‘worth his salt’. Keeping this in mind, my investigation began along the shores and harbours that mark the West Coast. Beside

the route natural lake beds of salt merged alongside large as well as artisanal industries of salt production. Piled high, white mounds of Cerebos salt line the main road leading to the centre of Velddrif, a coastal town approximately 145 km outside of Cape Town. Located on an estuary where the Berg River flows into St Helena Bay it is an important bird habitat and the lightly hued feathers of the flamingoes that line the river’s edge match the pink crust of salt formed on its bank. The town itself pays tribute to the industrial implications of the salt works and nearby coast. Salted, frozen, dried, canned and fresh seafood is prepared at several warehouses as well as by informal street vendors. Here the implications of the ecology on the economy are clearly evident. Consequently, I set out to create a body of work which served as an archive documenting this region by combining mobile printmaking techniques, found objects and harvested salt to produce sculptures as well as historic salt prints. Using salt as a conceptual and material tool, this exhibition considers the paradoxes inscribed in these environments, conflicted between an archival impulse to preserve the unavoidable vestiges of ruins.

1 B e n j a m i n , W. c i t e d b y C a d a v a , E . 1 9 9 7 . W o r d s o f L i g h t : T h e s e s o n t h e P h o t o g r a p h y o f H i s t o r y . P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s 2 D e r r i d a , J . 2 0 0 5 . O n To u c h i n g , J e a n - Lu c N a n c y . S t a n f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s 3 T r a c h t e n b e r g , A . 2 0 0 4 , “ T h i n g s o f f i l m : S h a d o w a n d V o i c e i n W r i g h t M o r r i s ’s F i e l d o f V i s i o n” , i n T h i n g s . B r o w n , B . e d . U n i v e r s i t y o f C h i c a g o P r e s s , 4 3 1 – 4 5 6 4 K u r l a n s k y, M . 2 0 0 3 . S a l t : A W o r l d H i s t o r y . V i n t a g e

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STEPHANI MĂ&#x153;LLER

Searching for Xanadu, Digital Print, 150 x 100 cm

‘ S A LV A G E D C I T AT I O N S ’

St Helena Bay, Salt Print on 320 g Hahn Veneto, 50 x 35 cm

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A . S k i n To n e

147 ‘Kgosigadi’

ELIZABETH NKOANA Can we talk? Can we talk about DiKgosigadi – the black queens of our time and the confidence and pride they have knowing who they are. Unapologetic, liberated, larger than life, stunningly beautiful and magical chocolate-skinned individuals. We are that new generation… the one that remembers the values their mothers taught them, yet are not scared to stand up and speak their story, irrespective of who is listening.

you to step into my shoes, even if just for a second… it is about me wanting you to experience what it is like being a modern, black, city girl with rural values, regardless of your gender or race. It is about saying that at the end of the day, no matter how you see me or other black women, we are real people with feelings, just like you. We may not look like you or see the world as you do, but we have our own stories to share too. We have fears, dreams and we feel just as much as you if not more. No matter how you see us, we ask that you respect us. As Jessie Williams put it ‘just because we are magic, it doesn’t mean we are not real.’ This particular body of work is a means of selfexploration. The pictures I create speak of a journey in which I find power in my femininity and blackness. They comment on various narratives that have been used to depict the black female body and at times challenge and play on such narratives to create something different. My work essentially is about me finding a way of reclaiming my own body and questioning the stereotypes and labels I have been given and face as a black South African woman. The work aims to challenge not only the viewer, but the artist too. Every time I look at my work, I am forced to question myself about what it is that I am saying, and every single time there is something new – something I had not noticed before.

My work is strongly influenced by my cultural background, my upbringing and the experiences I have had as a young black South African woman who is trying to find her voice in a world that feels like it has too many voices as it is. My work, simply put, is an invitation for the viewer to engage in conversation with the work and in essence with me – my work is very much dependent on and connected to me as the images portrayed are variations of me. The work is about me wanting to have a conversation with you: the viewer. It is about me wanting

The idea of transformation is a key factor in my work. Things constantly evolve and change, yet some things remain the same. This idea that the more things change, the more they remain the same started me thinking about what happens when the functionality of things is turned upside down. When things that are meant to be harmless are changed into things that can be read as dangerous and when what is seemingly weak is shown as strong. I do not wish to restrict or direct people’s interpretation of my work. The idea is for me to put my story out there and have the viewer read what they see based on who they are. My only request is: whatever the viewer sees, may they take it in mind that the black female body deserves the respect that it is not usually afforded.

B. Untitled III

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ELIZABETH NKOANA

Black Masks/White Faces I

‘KGOSIGADI’

Push, Spread, Rest

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150 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Kukho isililo somntuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

ASEMAHLE NTLONTI Central to my body of work is the examination of intergenerational trauma, loss and violence inflicted on black people. Looking at the links between personal memory and collective memory, I delve into the memorialisation of trauma that is reminiscent of the apartheid era in Democratic South Africa. Juxtaposing the experiences of my grandfather and myself, black pain becomes a common thread that in contemporary times, is still silenced with denialism that continues to inflict violence on the black body. In voicing this pain my process of art making therefore becomes a cathartic experience of exposing and healing these hidden violences. A

B A. Inhlangano, Installation view B. Isingqala, Rope, Wool, 238 x 78 cm

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C C . A m a b a l i , M e t a l , S p e a k e r, 5 6 x 4 6 . 6 c m

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ASEMAHLE NTLONTI

Isizilo, Metal, Blanket. 208 x 56 cm

‘KUKHO ISILILO SOMNTU’

Isililo Somntu, Metal, Wood, Stones, 248 x 70 x 60 cm

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ALEXANDER OELOFSE one day every drop of fresh water in the world will be privately owned – Blue Gold: World Water Wars

and to create farming centres in regions of drought, simply due to technological advancements and the role of money and power. I question what impact transporting such vast quantities of water will have on the environment, may it be for farming, urban development or bottled water. The privatisation of water creates new opportunities for multinational companies to capitalise on profits, but in doing so altering our topographies in unnatural ways.

The interplay between population growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation and the increasing role of politics and economics in relation to water resources has been a concern for decades. All life forms, be they plant, animal, fish or human depends on water for survival. My exhibition is focussed on water and is rooted in the wonder of water, its spiritual, meditative and cleansing properties. C

It was after water became listed on the stock market, a resource similar to gold and oil that I became concerned. I started to wonder what this would mean for future as well as present generations. I became fascinated by humans’ ability to transport immense quantities of water

Untitled I is a focal point in this exhibition. It is a video which shows the slow melting of a 100 kg ice block which has been transported from Cape Town to Verneukpan, which is 200 km from the Namibian border. This one piece aims to encompass many of my concerns. The ice block of this size is not common in a space such as the desert. In the piece I deliberately sought a location of extreme contrast, in which water is a scarcity. The ice block seems to find itself in a location so foreign and unnatural. The absurdity in getting an impermanent object such as an ice block to this location speaks to the absurdity of the moment we are in. In the futile gesture of transporting the block, in the same way that commercial water is being transported, and placing it in a foreign habitat, I have created conditions for its own demise. This exhibtion is concerned with water and it’s role in earth’s survival.

A. Untitled 07, 8 x 10 Inkjetprint on Watercolour B. Untitled 05, A3 Inkjetprint on Watercolour C. Untitled 10, A3 Inkjetprint on Watercolour

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D. U n t i t l e d 0 6 , A 3 I n k j e t p r i n t o n W a t e r c o l o u r E. Untitled 09, A3 Inkjetprint on Watercolour

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ALEXANDER OELOFSE

Untitled 03, A0 Inkjetprint on Watercolour

ALEXANDER OELOFSE

Untitled 04, A3 Inkjetprint on Watercolour

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158 ‘Go Ntsha Ditlhogo’ (Memorialising the burden of gift-giving)

OTHUSITSE OTIS MOSINYIEMANG Go Ntsha Ditlhogo used Bamangwato culture as a point of reference to address the notion of gift-giving which is popularly known as Go Ntsha Dithogo, in Setswana. Go Ntsha Dithogo literally translates as ‘Go nstha...’ means to contribute or to give out, and ‘Dithogo’ which in English means ‘heads’ but has two meanings in Setswana; it can mean heads or some form of contributions nephews or nieces give as gifts to their uncles and aunts as a token of appreciation. Now with this custom being traditionalised and made into an expectation for every Mongwato child who is working to contribute part of his/her salary to family members who are less privileged.

The deficiency in a complete outline of this traditionalised practice (Go Ntsha Dithogo) has stimulated the study of such a topic from a Botswana’s viewpoint. It is with this purpose that this installation clarifies the concepts of Go Ntsha Dithogo as the burden of giftgiving, by analysing gift-giving and its effects on both the givers and receivers. This, through art installations of

objects made of cement, wax, and metal will discuss the effects that determines the burden of gift-giving and to make some measurements and analyses of the weight and impact of its burden. The installations will raise questions on the value of these objects and their significance in the current post-colonial Botswana. Finally, it will synthesise the theoretical analysis into some universal principles of burden and to apply them to the analyses of ‘Go Ntsha Dithogo’ as a traditionalised custom of economic burden in Bamangwato culture. It will also look at the body in place that does the giving and exposed to this burden. Looking at the installation, both concrete and wax objects questions the notion of appropriate gifts not only to the receivers but also to the person who buys them. The argument is: how important is it to purchase these objects instead of tackling other family issues, like buying building materials and other things that will improve home? Now the buying of these objects is seen by the givers as a burden because it is inappropriate and a form of greediness by the receivers as gifts and honor. This has brought about an interesting debate on these objects. This installation’s argument is used to debate the notion of Go Ntsha Dithogo as a form of gift-giving which at some point the receiver has to specify what kind of gifts they want to get. This refers to gifts which look to ridicule practice. If someone is being forced to buy something that doesn’t add value to his/her life, then it will always become a problematic practice. That is, he/she can blame the system that is in place for any financial debts or compromise the quality of the gift to fit his/ her budget. The other installation comprises of nine cabinets commonly known as wall unit which are commonly used to display some crockery, plates and other ornamental objects in the living rooms. These cabinets are used to contain objects that are bought expensively and they are locked and kept in these cabinets. These objects are carefully curated both inside and on top of the cabinet and they are never used. They are just objects that beautify and are used to show visitors how many objects the other houses have in their collection. The more objects the more recognition and respect one earns from the visitors. For

A. Cement shirt, Detail from Go Ntsha Ditlhogo Installation.

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one to acquire at least substantial amounts of objects he/ she has to be working or have a source of income. One can compromise his/her salary by buying these objects over other life necessities. The observation is that someone who does not earn much will end up sacrificing part of their income to buy in hire purchase. This kind of contract ends up putting one in a heavy financial debt. And the condition of the contract is if one fails to settle the outstanding amount, all products will be repossessed by the company or surcharged. Now parents who sometimes fails to pay will involve their working children to settle their bills for them. The expectations from parents of their children is, if children are working it is a must for them to buy their parents and sometimes other family members these objects. Recently there has been seen as a form of gift-giving from children to their family members. This, according to this installation, is one of the problematic consumption practices that perpetually exerts financial pressure on people. The installation questions the use and significance of these objects in relation to their value and use. In the installation the cabinets are being deconstructed and made of metal, the structure does not have shelves and doors to show the idea of transparency and access which is a subversion of the normal cabinets. The installation’s cabinets has cement cornices both at the bottom and top to signify the idea of burden and also the idea of one being stuck in a heavy

burden. I will make a series of nine cabinets that will reference the number of members of my extended family. Growing up as a child from this kind of space is always challenging as one has to be cautious when handling these objects. Most, if not all, of the time, these objects are not used, but if mistakenly the child breaks or use one of the object without parents’ permission he/she got severely punished. This installation challenges the notion of ‘Go Ntsha Dithogo’ as a traditionalised practice which exerts a financial burden on people. Buying and consumption of ‘useless’ objects is seen as a problematic practice moreover it is expensive to a point where it can lead to financial debt. This installation complements the other installation of gift-giving (the one comprises of cement shirts, cement wallet, cement hats, wax blanket and wax duke) as they both speak of financial burden, and have also been caught up in some kind of traditional practices that doesn’t add any specific value to human living. The display also adds a spatial relationship to the two installations as the first one will be layered on the floor and on the other side of it we will have the standing structures. Both installation will also use concrete cement, which is used because of its heaviness and appearance which resembles burden and memorial. The installation is layered in a visual rhythm that signifies both cemetery, memorial and the body in absence.

B. Go Ntsha Ditlhogo, Installation, (Hats, Blankets, Shir ts, Wallets and Dukes) Wax, and Cement. 350 x 450 cm approx

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OTHUSITSE OTIS MOSINYIEMANG

9 Cabinets, Installation, Metal and Cement, 250 x 300 cm

‘GO NTSHA DITLHOGO’ ( M E M O R I A L I S I N G T H E B U R D E N O F G I F T- G I V I N G )

Details from Go ntsha ditlhogo Installation

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LARA KEMP REUSCH The basis of my work comes from walking. My desire was to connect myself with my environment, which has become increasingly important to me considering the critical state that the environment is in. My first memory of walking in the natural landscape was between the ages of 6 and 8 when my dad regularly took my brother and me on hikes in the Drakensberg. Both my father and my brother have since passed away. Thus, walking also became a way to re-connect with them and reinsert them within my present landscape in the Cape. Walking inevitably became as much an inward connection as an outward connection with the landscape. Robert Macfarlane (2013:17), a travel writer, wrote that ‘paths connected real places but they also led outwards to metaphysics, backwards to history and inwards to the self ’ 1.

While walking I noticed, and was amazed by, how much people had left, discarded or forgotten within the environment. I began collecting these discarded items – the physical evidence of our existence on the earth. In transforming the discarded I drew on the qualities of the cairn to acknowledge that they were found along a pathway. A cairn is a pile of stones stacked on top of each other to show hikers the way. They are created with found stones within the landscape but the unnaturalness of their stacked formation is what signals to the hiker that they are on the right path. Each cairn is a guide and makes up a part of the whole of the pathway, both in the land and now in the gallery. A

Macfarlane, R. 2013. The Old Way: A Journey on Foot. London: Penguin Books

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The various walks became somewhat of a pilgrimage and an apology to the land. Walking barefoot and carrying the weight of the objects left by humans allowed my body to inhabit the burden of that apology. Being barefoot also establishes a strong, direct connection with the land: which I captured by taking prints of my feet at various points along the walk. However, there is not only a physical connection to the land but also an internal one: thoughts, feelings, observations and memories brought up by the walk. Thus, each footprint is accompanied by a text piece which refers to whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening in my mind. I further documented the walking by wearing white wrap-around skirts that dragged on the ground as I walked, collecting evidence of the land I had been in, allowing the land to create its own landscape on it. With each walk the environment around me became filled with memories and experiences. My surrounding landscapes were no longer distant unknowns but had a shape and place in my mind. I achieved an increased awareness for the space I occupy. Even though my actual art practice is not overtly based on environmental issues, I hope that by inciting a connection with our landscape people become more aware of the way their actions affect it.

A. Within Without (woodcut cairn), Found Pine Wood and Wood Shavings, Variable Dimensions B. Mending (net cairn), Found Net and Rope, Variable Dimensions C. Landscapes, Fabric and Ear th, 1470 x 1090 mm D. A s c e n d ( w o o d c a i r n ) , F o u n d W o o d a n d R o p e , 1 3 6 0 x 1 4 7 0 x 1 5 0 0 m m

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LARA KEMP REUSCH

Home (letter cairn), Fabriano Paper and Found Bucket, 700 x 270 mm

LARA KEMP REUSCH

TO P : 4 4 C i g a r e t t e B u t t s ( r e c y c l e d p a p e r c a i r n ) , x 9 A n o n y m o u s Fra g m e n t s , x 4 4 C i g a r e t t e B u t t s , x 2 N e w s p a p e r Fra g m e n t s , x 1 W h i t e S t r i n g , x 1 K F C B ox , x 1 P e n c i l S h a v i n g s , 1 1 0 x 1 6 0 m m M c D o n a l d ’s a n d a M e r r y C h r i s t m a s S e r v i e t t e ( r e c y c l e d p a p e r c a i r n ) , x 1 M e n t o s P a c ke t , x 9 C i g a r e t t e B ox e s , x 1 M c d o n a l d ’s P a c ke t , x 6 A n o n y m o u s Fra g m e n t s , x 5 N e w s p a p e r Fra g m e n t s , x 1 B u s i n e s s C a r d , x 1 Fo o d P a c ke t s , x 1 C o n d o m B ox , x 1 R e c e i p t , x 1 S m i r n o f f L a b e l , x 1 B u s T i c ke t , x 1 M e r r y C h r i s t m a s S e r v i e t t e , x 1 M a t c h B ox , x 4 I c e C r e a m S t i c k s , 2 1 5 x 1 5 5 m m We a t h e r e d ( [ n a t u ra l l y ] r e c y c l e d p a p e r c a i r n ) , F o u n d I n v o i c e B o o k , 1 9 5 x 1 4 0 m m B OT TO M : To M a k e A n I m p r e s s i o n I s A l s o To R e c e i v e O n e , Fa b r i a n o R o s a s p i n a a n d E a r t h , 3 4 5 x 5 0 0 m m

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166 ‘Unmothered’

LUCY ROBSON Unmothered is a study of the complex relationship that I have with my mother, and the dynamics that are at play within my family as a whole. It is a treasury of images that record my attempt to separate from my mother, and furthermore, to capture her essence in a bid to ward off her future non-existence. The photographic images exist in conjunction with dialogues – real and imagined – and speak to themes prevalent in my work: performance, memory and story telling. Unmothered disrupts the notion of The Family Album (and the happy snapshots that permeate it) by exploring themes within the Familial canon that are troubling and uncomfortable. Unmothered is a deeply personal coming-of-age narrative that investigates notions of family, motherhood and identity through the careful collection and curation of fragments of the world – my world – as I understand it.

This Be The Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. By Philip Larkin A A . O v e r m y d e a d b o d y, G i c l é e P r i n t , 1 6 . 5 3 x 2 3 . 3 9 i n c h e s B. Untitled, Giclee Print, 33.11 x 46.81 inches

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E C. Untitled, Giclée Print, 6 x 10 inches D. U n t i t l e d , G i c l é e P r i n t , 6 x 1 0 i n c h e s E. Fancy thinking the beast was somethng you could hunt and kill, Giclée Print, 11.69 x 16.53 inches

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LUCY ROBSON

T h ey d o n’ t a p p re c i a t e i t u n t i l yo u ’ re d e a d , G i c l é e P r i n t , 1 1 . 6 9 x 1 6 . 5 3 i n c h e s

‘UNMOTHERED’

Bon Maman, Giclée Print, 8 x 12 inches

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A . R e v e l a t i o n , J o i n e d S a p e l e , L E D, M i l d S t e e l . 1 8 2 5 x 2 7 6 0 m m

171 ‘You Don't Have To Walk A Mile Repenting’

TIAGO RODRIGUES

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine – Oliver, 1993 Social Movement analyst Alberto Melucci (1989:178) argued that the most prized value in modern industrialised societies is the ‘freedom to be’. Growing up in a Catholic family, I struggled to ever feel free enough to be, and looking at society around me as a kid I didn’t see much freedom to be there either. So I don’t know what ‘modern industrialized society’ Melucci was talking about, but I wasn’t seeing it. As a kid I had this overwhelming fear of what would happen if I didn’t listen to God’s will (who’s message at this point was disgorged from the priest each evening at mass, the words of corrupt men told as if they were truths). I remember the first time I was formally introduced to the act of penance during my first confession, after delivering a list of child-like offences to the priest, he gave me a few Hail Marys and a couple of Our Fathers and that was it. Free to go, with no more guilt, until the next time I defied ‘His’ apparent will.

See no one tells you that these ancient concepts of God were created to explain the complexity of this world, that these were stories of things unknown. And that at some point in time, a fallible man got his hands on these stories and skewed the message by personifying what could not be personified – claiming truth to what was clearly imagination. How convenient that ‘man’ was created in God’s image, when the concept of how we came to be is so far from the grasp of any human mind. Yet the concept of penance remains with me today. From a young age I would create these actions I would need to perform if I did something that was against God’s will, or something I didn’t do if I wanted God on my side for a specific situation, or else the unsettling fear of damnation would set in. I soon learned the difference between superstition and the truth. It is not shameful to carry the hurts from the past; rather, if we are to revision our different masculinities, an important f irst step is to f ind the courage to share more of what we have silently carried inside us for so long. – Seidler, 1997

B. I Hang My Head With Yours, Car ved Sapele, Brass Hooks, Ceramic, Nylon Braid. 200 x 1170 mm

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TIAGO RODRIGUES

Falling, Single Channel Video Performance. 1:50

‘ YO U D O N ’ T H AV E TO WALK A MILE REPENTING’

S o o t h s a y e r ’s T r i n i t y , I r o k o , P e r s p e x , B r a i d e d V e c t r a n C o r d , F o u n d O b j e c t ( C r u c i f i x ) , W a x C a n d l e . 2 2 5 x 3 0 5 m m

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174 ‘DIS(re)MEMBERINGS’

NICOLA ROOS I wanted to present Malintzin, or Doña Marina, a woman of multiple names and by extension, talents – as a person of independent judgment, of intense and dramatic qualities, and of superior intellect … a woman of unparalleled conf idence, visibility, and achievement. – Deena J. González, ‘Malinche Triangulated, Historically Speaking’ in Romero & Harris Feminism, Nation and Myth (2005)

The involvement of two particular indigenous women in the global tale of European conquest has remained imprinted in the popular imagination and mainstream socio-philosophical discourse over the last five hundred years: La Malinche in Mexico and Krotoä-Eva in South Africa. Despite fading in and out of history, both La Malinche and Krotoä-Eva were unmistakeably present in their various contexts at that one particular moment in time when the indigenous and the colonial brutally

collided and, allegorically speaking, one ‘empire’ was destroyed forever while another was violently birthed. Simultaneously regarded as ‘ethnic sell-outs’ and ‘mothers of the nation’ their disputed legacies of cultural exchange and racial hybridity have continued to influence the mentality of the Postcolony in both South America and South Africa for over five centuries. With many details of their personal lives virtually entirely lost to history, Malintzin Tenepal (commonly referred to as La Malinche in discourse) and Krotoä-Eva remain known to us by a myriad of names and mythohistorical personas that continue to survive in-between the extraneous European and the Indigenous American/ Indigenous South African space. From the Nahua term La Malinche to Octavio Paz’s vilified passive-receptive trope, La Chingada; from the filicidal bogeywoman La Llorona to the first dark-skinned Catholic guardian of Mexican mestizos, La Virgen de Guadalupe, these multifaceted women are essentially anchored by one central concept: the notion of La Lengua. Their distinction is owed to their unparalleled ability to translate between worlds. However, despite their roles as interpreters and translators, their autonomy has been wholly eroded: They have been dismembered and disremembered by all the voices who have spoken for them and through them over the last five hundred years in a struggle to consolidate a myriad of disparate ancestries in today’s Mexico and South Africa alike. The legacy of La Malinche, the so-called ‘historical echo’ of Krotoä-Eva, is divided between that of the ‘treacherous interpreter’ and that of the ‘first mother’. While references to Krotoä-Eva as the ‘first womb’ are more frequently of a positive nature, allusions to her ‘voice’, such as in the case of La Malinche, are virtually entirely adverse. The deleterious facet of La Malinche is given the name of ‘La Lengua,’ or ‘The Tongue’. In various historical accounts, she is simply given the role of the ‘mouthpiece’, bereft of any name or personal agency. Despite the ideology of La Lengua later being appropriated to reintroduce La Malinche as the Cultural Mediator (a near-Biblical icon of feminine salvation), both La Malinche and Krotoä-Eva were eventually

A . L a V i r g e n ( T h e S a v i o u r ) , P l a s t e r o f P a r i s , A c r y l i c R e s i n , P o l y u r e t h a n e F o a m , R e c y c l e d I n n e r Ty r e Tu b e s , W o o d , N a i l s , C o t t o n C l o t h , C o t t o n C o r d a n d L a c e , 1930 x 730 x 610 mm

175 subjected to a gradual descent from the position of La Lengua to that of La Matriz, or ‘The Womb’. The maternal aspect of these dominant female figures has been vastly maligned to justify their denunciation as the mother-whores of the new nations they conceived with their European partners, their traitorous ‘indigenous’ blood forever condemning their descendants – the hijos de la Malinche (‘sons of the Outsider’) as they were so damningly termed by Octavio Paz (1950) in El Laberinto de la Soledad (A Labyrinth of Solitude).

Paz hypothesised that the union between the Nahua slave girl who came to serve as an invaluable interpreter to the Spanish during the Conquest of Mexico, Malintzin Tenepal, and Conquistador Hernándo Cortés came to be the foundation for the incapacitating machismo and sense of rootlessness that undermines the psychological state of Mexico today. Similarly, in postcolonial South Africa, the two decades since the advent of democracy have borne witness to the emergence of various new nationalist ideologies; the most recent of these is a nascent trend that is characterised by an aspiration to reconnect the white Afrikaner with an African ancestry. This encourages a re-examination of the figure of Krotoä-Eva, possibly one of the most written about women in (South) African history. Like La Malinche (retitled Doña Marina by the Spanish), Krotoä-Eva was known as much for her linguistic and diplomatic skills as for her baptism. As a permanent member of the household of Jan van Riebeeck in the mid-17th century, the young Krotoä was christened under the name of Eva – the ‘first woman’ of the new era. Taken into the Fort when she was only twelve, Krotoä-Eva came to serve as a mouthpiece, a mediator, a translator between the European colonials and the Goringhaicona people of Table Bay. Marked as a traitor to her own family and condemned for ‘currying favour’ with the Dutch, she was bound in matrimony to a European colonist in her adult life. Despite her high standing amongst the Dutch community at the Cape, she was eventually branded an ‘unruly drunk’ under the ‘veneer’ of Christianity – an unf it mother. Her children were removed from her care

to be raised by a colonial family after the death of her husband and her subsequent banishment to Robben Island. Similarly, La Malinche earned the hatred of both the Aztecs among whom she had previously lived and her native Nahua people when she was impugned for aiding the Spanish in their legendary victory at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521. Martín, the son she had by Cortés, was then entrusted to a confidante of the Conquistador and she was married off to a Spanish nobleman when she was no longer of much use to Cortés and his endeavours in the New World. These five figurative sculptural works are each a different aspect of the Malinche-enigma: The Bitch, The Saviour, The Lamenter, The Outsider and The Tongue. They attempt to unpack the ways in which these two women have transformed our sense of cultural and racial belonging, especially in a country where the concept of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ is such an inadvertently sentimental and equally volatile postcolonial ideology. They present themselves to us to be reclaimed and re-remembered in order to abate the nightmare of our deeply conflicted, violently segregated, ethnographically chaotic national history. They exist within the fundamentally liminal space that offers viewer and subject alike an escape from the everpresent politics of divergence... as well as an opportunity to arise as alternate versions of themselves.

B . S e e d o f t h e N e w W o r l d , F o u n d W i r e B a s k e t , R e c y c l e d I n n e r Ty r e Tu b e s , C o t t o n C o r d , 5 8 0 m m d i a m e t e r x 2 0 0 m m C . A T i m e To B e B o r n , W o o d , N a i l s , S c r e w s , P l a s t i c , I r o n O r e G ra n u l e s , R e c y c l e d I n n e r Ty r e Tu b e s , 1 1 2 0 x 4 0 0 m m

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NICOLA ROOS

L a L e n g u a ( T h e To n g u e ) , P l a s t e r o f P a r i s , A c r y l i c R e s i n , P o l y u r e t h a n e F o a m , R e c y c l e d I n n e r Ty r e Tu b e s , W o o d , N a i l s , C o t t o n C l o t h , C o t t o n C o r d a n d O s t r i c h E g g S h e l l Beads, 1560 x 600 x 1060 mm

‘DIS(RE)MEMBERINGS’

T O P : M a r t í n ’s C r a d l e , F o u n d A n t i q u e Y e l l o w W o o d C r a d l e , N a i l s , S c r e w s , O s t r i c h E g g S h e l l B e a d s , C o t t o n C o r d , R e c y c l e d I n n e r T y r e T u b e s , 7 4 0 x 6 2 0 x 3 0 0 m m B O T T O M : F o l l o w i n g t h e R a i n , F o u n d A n t i q u e H a t B o x , N a i l s , S c r e w s , C o t t o n C o r d , R e c y c l e d I n n e r Ty r e Tu b e s , O s t r i c h E g g S h e l l , 4 0 0 m m d i a m e t e r x 2 8 0 m m

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178 ‘Imposition’

GABRIELLE SANSON There is no such thing as empty space. As long as a human eye is looking, there is always something to see. To look at something which is ‘empty’ is still to be looking, still to be seeing something – if only the ghosts of one’s own expectations. Not only does silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any given silence has its identity as a stretch of time being perforated by sound. A genuine emptiness, a pure silence is not feasible – either conceptually or in fact. If only because the artwork exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence. Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech… and an element in dialogue. – Susan Sontag (1967 )

Having consulted the dusty tome of western Modernism, a preoccupation with the ontology and materiality of painting emerged. As a discipline, painting becomes the site in which to deliberate personal concerns, whilst the medium – and an investigation of its relevance as an art form in contemporary practice – has also become central to my inquiry.

In February 2016, after a nationwide resurgence of campus uprisings, a number of symbolic, historical paintings were burned during a housing protest at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This event raised complex questions surrounding the status of painting as sacrosanct in a contemporary artistic and social arena, but also regarding the value of prevailing symbols of oppression in South Africa today. This incisive event on UCT’s Upper Campus served as a catalyst for further establishing my contextual practice concerns, whilst the prevailing trauma of related realities more deeply embedded itself. The resultant work is exemplified by void surfaces, exposed internal structures, and the negation of image. Reflecting a reticent position, the aim has been to achieve something close to a visual silence. Some surfaces have been deliberately erased of image, whilst others have been abandoned altogether. Representational references that are found mostly reveal an absence. Here, I signal an inability to speak, alongside the act of silencing. The evidence of disrupted making – as a result of both physical and nonphysical obstructions – is also embodied. A

Sontag, S. 1969. The Aesthetics of Silence. In Styles of Radical Will. London: Penguin

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A. Rag, Oil on Belgian Linen, Dimensions Variable B. Neighbourhood Watch, Oil on canvas; Dimensions Variable C. Veil, Canvas, Wood, Dimensions Variable

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GABRIELLE SANSON

Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 90 x 75 cm

‘IMPOSITION’

U n t i t l e d , S y n t h e t i c Tu l l e , B a m b o o , T h r e a d , D r e s s m a k i n g P i n s , 7 3 . 5 x 5 5 c m

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MICHA SERRAF

As a Zimbabwean citizen seeking refuge in South Africa, I left home and came to live in Cape Town. My fellow foreign nationals and aliens’ journeys, stories and experiences resonate with some of my own and their struggles, with mine. I am working on a project that deals with afrophobia, human migration, the identities merged and blended therein and the issues surrounding xenophobia and my ‘alien’ existence. My life as a Zimbabwean living in South Africa is not always easy. My first real experience with xenophobia was being thrown out of a cab in the middle of a city I knew nothing about. Since then I have often found myself in situations where I feel safer lying about my true identity than disclosing this integral part of who I am. My work attempts to bring to light the foreign, victim and mixed identities within everyone. Looking back on my first few years at school in South Africa, I have only recently started seeing them for they were: times in which my identity as a Zimbabwean was ridiculed. I used to pretend to laugh at questions like: ‘How did you come to South Africa? Did you climb over or under the border fence?’ because it was always easier to let it slide. However, I can no longer let it slide. My work has therefore focused on my own migration and how it has shaped who I am, and the migration of other

Africans and how it has shaped their identities. Through self portraiture and photography I use the constant fear of violence and discovery to explore my alien identity. Why on my own continent do I f ight the feeling that I trespass?

B A. Eish!, 594 x 333 mm B. Pre-emptive Protection (Sprayed with a high-powered fire extinguisher), 1189 x 792 mm

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D C. Untitled, 420 x 280 mm D. U n t i t l e d , 2 9 7 x 4 4 4 m m

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MICHA SERRAF

TOP: Shamwari, 448 x 539 mm BOTTOM: Alien, 448 x 539 mm

MICHA SERRAF

A Goodyear, 1189 x 891 mm

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A. Weeds Only Fall Forward Into Entropy, Hosepipe, Brass, Mild Steel, 290 x 230 x 105 cm

187 ‘The Grass is Greener Next to a White Wall’

JOSHUA KELT STANLEY

As the Garden changes colour and the soil turns to cemented dust. Paradise and leisure so too etiolate till they are as transparent and white as the walls they are surrounded by. From homes to spot lit galleries, the ambiguity of the perception of space, needs to be opened. From current social disparities to the all-consuming human, I need to understand what is constructed and what is natural. Is our souls’ desire our own, or is it egged on by the unconsidered consequence? The rippling action experienced till its source is forgotten and its present reverberation is only that manipulated concept. Why has that fucker left the gate open again?

weighted clothes; a moment to see what is there, not in the realm of things, but in the Garden growing and dying, chaos and control. The garden is as ambiguous as the individual and the spirit. An attempt to disambiguate my own reality, I found the garden as the answer. Like Douglas Adams’ 42. My privileged sanctuary, where I create and destroy, while trying to grasp things that cannot be known, just understood.

We kill our plants while we climb on the bended backs of others; it’s just another’s life lived. Still in the dented grass there is a bud. We have not devoured it all. There is an inkling alive in moments. Whether we live in memory manipulated, present, or future imagined, there are moments of light and green but there are also rotting roots and illconceived realities that people couldn’t choose. Submerged in this ambiguous moment, subjective perception and constructed experience bare their C B. THE HEDGES, Polystyrene, 120 x 480 x 16 cm C. About Nothing Else But Dying And Being Dead (2), Cardboard, PVC Pipe, 61 x 42 x 18 cm

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J O S H U A K E LT S TA N L E Y

The Gardener , Ash Wood, Installation Variable

‘THE GRASS IS GREENER N E X T T O A W H I T E W A L L’

About Nothing Else But Dying and Being Dead (1), Cardboard, PVC Pipe, 250 x 100 x 85 cm

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190 ‘And what was supposed to come about, has not.’

BENJAMIN STANWIX Over the past year, I’ve thought more and more about the relationship between translation, history and the activity of making images. Any process of translation reveals the inevitable failure of attempts to accurately reconstruct a foreign text or idea, but also the potential productivity of this failure – the mistranslation. This tension is replicated in the work of creating images, where there is often a great distance between the image intended, the image made, and the image apprehended by the viewer. Related to this is the way in which a story travels through time, how it fragments, expands and distorts, while continually being pieced back together in hindsight. Again, this is the activity taking place in the studio – piecing together fragments and relying on the retrospective glance that assigns significance to a process by observing its outcome. B

Consider a basic question, for instance – how does one read an image of a landscape in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2017? Of course, any understanding of a landscape is informed by the way it is rendered and the historical forces brought to bear on this, which we can’t escape. To put this more directly, there is a double sense of history at work – the history of the landscape in question, and the history of the artistic tradition being engaged. Similar questions can, of course, be asked of a bust, a portrait, or a still life. Each carries its own symbolic history that prompts a response.

the terms and structure of the final outcome. Drawings of damaged sculptures lead to making plaster casts of my own head, which are chipped away until they no longer exist. The process is repeated for the camera several times and eventually filmed only as a shadow. There is the creative work done by the mould and the destructive work by hand. A still life is slowly covered in white paint, and a landscape drawing becomes the source material for a large woodcut where the original view is obscured. Consecutive automated translations of a well-known myth are used to distil its message into an unexpected ‘haiku’. And incomplete online image searches operate as snapshots of a concept in its least complicated form. But each time there is the sense of an inability to make the ‘right’ set of images – the productive mistakes, the attempt to understand the contingency of the process, what the images mean and how they ended up like this. The historian and the translator are always present, and the images that emerge serve as a stand-in for those that do not exist – a mistranslation of the initial impulse.

In my case, much of the work emerges through experimentation with an image or idea in different mediums, where the material constraints directly shape A. There is no other way to say this, Digital Print, 28.5 x 18 cm B. Untitled (historian), Lithograph, 36 x 28 cm

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C . S t i l l L i f e , C a p e To w n , V i d e o S t i l l , D i m e n s i o n s Va r i a b l e D. H e a d o f a m a n , L i t h o g r a p h , 4 0 x 3 0 c m

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BENJAMIN S TA N W I X

Self-por trait III, Photographic Print, 40 x 31 cm

‘A N D W H AT W A S S U P P O S E D T O C O M E A B O U T, H A S N O T.’

TOP: Landscape I, Woodcut on 13 Pinned Sheets, 110 x 95 cm B O T T O M : W h i t e . B u t f i r s t , t h e w e a t h e r , C o n s e c u t i v e G o o g l e T r a n s l a t i o n s o f t h e B a b e l S t o r y, I n k j e t P r i n t , 1 0 5 P a g e s , D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e

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JASE STRAUSS In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. – Ephesians 2:21-22, New International Version If the intent of church buildings is to create sacred spaces that achieve active participation and involve human communities in the fullest range of their life experiences, their design and its implementation should seek to engage it’s dwellers on as many levels as possible. As such, when architectural and aesthetic choices are made, a consideration of the fact that the demographic of its users are not always adults or ‘well-educated’ needs to be made.

Architect Steven Schloeder argues that of all buildings the church should speak most clearly to our human senses, intellect, memories, emotions and imagination. He believes that as the architect is to serve the building of a sacred space, so should the architecture serve the liturgy. Therefore, nothing in the design can be carelessly considered or exist as a mere end in itself, ‘for if it does, it has nothing to offer, nothing to teach, nothing with which to draw the soul closer to God’ (Schloeder, 1998:42). Church buildings should embody the values of their members, determined largely by how they think of God, His work in the Church and their concept of what the Church is and the members’ place within its

structure. That being said, the status, value and role of children as bearers of an evolving religious autonomy is often negated in that many scholars of theology and practitioners of Western Christianity only theorise children as simple extensions of the interests of their parents and consider childhood a mere transient state before reaching adulthood. Pastor Charles Price maintains that one of the many dangers of contemporary Christianity and the Church is that it has become ‘too adult, too austere, too regulated, too predictable, too sufficient, whereas the greatness in God’s Kingdom involves leaving those things behind and going back to childlike humility, spontaneity, joy and play’ (Price, 2015). Acquiring the nature of a child is the key principle in entering God’s kingdom. Price believes that, while physically we grow from dependence to independence, spiritually we need to retain and recapture a childlike trust and dependency on the Heavenly Father. Thus, my body of work centres around the manipulation of key architectural features and furnishings found in Western Christian Churches in an attempt to make them more accessible for children and encourage a more inclusive consideration of church inhabitants’ interactions with sacred spaces and how they influence their believers’ development of faith and their ability to worship. I have attempted to explore the relationships that exist between play, children and the church. Children’s play is diverse and can be implemented and interpreted in various different ways. However, space

A. And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play (Detail), Metal, Pine Wood, Imbuia Stain, Dimensions Variable B. And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play (Detail), Metal, Pine Wood, Imbuia Stain, Dimensions Variable

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to play is increasingly controlled by adults who have become accustomed to regarding play as ‘shamming in comparison with serious work and reverent worship, as something to be avoided when we engage in religious exercises.’ (Seashore, 1910:505). Regarding its place in religion, specifically Christianity, it seems that most adults have forgotten the faith’s playful roots, and have instead learnt to be serious, conforming and rulebound and have subjected children to the same kind of governing ideals. The difficulty inherent in considering play and the sacred as existing in harmony with each other lies in the misunderstanding of the nature of play, its origin and the role it plays in religion. By insisting on the purely serious nature of religion and theology while treating ‘play’ as synonymous with the ‘inconsequential’ and the ‘frivolous’, adults continue to fail to focus on an essential aspect of the sacred, namely, its intrinsic playfulness.

church furnishings by altering and merging their already known forms and functions to generate new pieces that form part of a ‘spiritual playground’, potentially sparking conversation about the new interpretations of them. By creating a more accessible and interactive spiritual model space, my work can open up a dialogue about accessibility and agency, and question the gate-keeping of behaviour by adults for children in the Christian community, and what it means to worship, how we worship, what types of spaces we worship in, and whether they facilitate the growth and nurturing of the faith of the people who have the most to offer Christianity in terms of providing new and refreshing ways to imagine a relationship with God.

In fact, playfulness allows children to grow, learn and even to worship. It incorporates the physical body, the spirit, and emotions, and provides one with the power of creativity and innovation. Thus, my own art production has essentially become about transforming the preexisting codes and symbolism of specific play objects and

C. And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play, Metal, Pine Wood, Imbuia Stain, Dimensions Variable

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JASE STRAUSS

And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play, Metal, Pine Wood, Imbuia Stain, Dimensions Variable (Detail)

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198 ‘Negro Sunshine’

KATLEGO TLABELA We, creators of the new generation, we want to examine our Black personality, without shame or fear. – Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, 1926

NEGRO SUNSHINE (2016) makes use of Black History and the contemporary as central points of reference. In this body of work I draw out and accentuate only positive references to music, visual and photographic archives, personal histories, protest and resistance, literature, and undocumented sports heroines and heroes.

‘negro sunshine’ shine brightly in yellow and black. The words ‘negro sunshine’ were re-appropriated from Gertrude Stein’s 1909 novella Three Lives in which Stein repeatedly implements the phrase to describe the novella’s main protagonists – which at the time referred to the racist stereotype of the ‘happy darkie’. Like Ligon, I have re-appropriated the phrase in order to create an entry point to this year’s growing body of work, with an attempt to strip away all negative connotations. The texts in the paintings are derived and reimagined from various sources including Eli Weinberg’s photographic work, quotations from Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Ben Okri, Jay Z, Kanye West, Boris Gardener, Drake & Future’s mixtape ‘What a Time to Be Alive’, and the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) placards from 1924. In these paintings, executed with media primarily synonymous with printmedia, execution

Each of these references, be it the fall of the Cecil Rhodes statue on the UCT grounds, the latest Drake and Future rap song, the stories of King Daudi Cwa II of Buganda, the triumphant Jack Johnson who became the world’s first Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion or an iconic 1956 photo by Eli Weinberg which documents protesting womxn supporting leaders awaiting a Treason Trial form part of a central tenet to the creation of this body of work. This body of work is encapsulated by various media, each serving a particular intention/context and execution. An entry point to this body of work is a series of paintings that re-appropriate texts derived from works titled Warm Broad Glow (2005) and Untitled (2005) by African American multi-disciplinary artist Glenn Ligon which have been created with neon lighting, the words

A . B l a c k K i d s Ta k i n g N o L o s s e s ! , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d i t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 X 8 0 0 m m B . B l a c k O w n e d P r o p e r t y , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e W o v e n P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d i t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 x 8 0 0 m m

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plays an important role where some paintings are completely bold and visible whereas others require future visual interpretation. A central tenet of NEGRO SUNSHINE is completely personal and political. This can be seen in the photographic series titled Levitate (Frame I–VI). The title pays homage to African American rapper Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled 07/Levitate, a three-part song that mostly captures the discharge of an emotional rush which consists of the initial elation of the artist, the spark of confidence, rebelliousness and self-love. In the song the call to ‘levitate’, which is repeatedly chanted, is a reminder to transcend these established emotions. In an attempt to capture these emotions, Levitate (Frame I–III) takes the form of sequential self-portraits in which I don a Lesotho Crown which I created in memory and honour of my late grandfathers, Thapedi Tlabela and Erasmus Moloto. The series highlights Frame I which accentuates elation and confidence, emotions I have not felt or wholeheartedly expressed prior to the inception of the body of work. Another tenet Levitate investigates is the hyper-visible, hyper-fetishistic and hyper-real Black African body – a body that was less visible, grotesque and powerless. By

making use of my own and of my partner’s bodies that the West once traded as ‘black gold’, we propose a selfconscious, self-owned, self-aware and polished display of power which today has shifted from the slaver to the previously enslaved.

NEGRO SUNSHINE (2016) embodies Blackness as a social, political and emotional currency. Blackness is now a priceless currency that attempts to bring a new growth, change and revival, where beauty, pride and an unapologetic defiance is born out of the ashes.

C . P o r t r a i t o f J u l i a R i c h a r d s o n ( F o r M a m a ) , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e W o v e n P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d i t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 x 8 0 0 m m D. S e l f a s K i n g D a u d i C w a I I , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d i t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 x 8 0 0 m m E . I ’ m B l a c k A l r i g h t , I ’ l l N e v e r L e t T h e m F o r g e t I t , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e W o v e n P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d i t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 x 8 0 0 m m

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K AT L E G O TLABELA

Negro Sunshine (After Ligon), Enamel on Streched Canvas, 800 x 600 mm

‘NEGRO SUNSHINE’

U n t i t l e d ( F i s t ) , O f f s e t P h o t o - L i t h o g r a p h o n O p a l e W o v e n P u r e W h i t e 2 5 0 g s m , E d t i o n o f 1 0 + 2 A P, 1 0 8 0 x 8 0 0 m m

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B A . AT S T A K E , W o o d e n S t a k e s , C o n c r e t e S l a b s , 3 0 x 3 0 x 3 0 c m B . D O U S E , S t e p L a d d e r, W a x A n d C a n d l e W i c k , 1 x 0 . 6 m

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GABRIELLE VAN DER MERWE The liminal space is a constant deconstruction of old habits and old ways of thinking and reconstruction of a new perspective of self. It is a never ending loop as we emotionally grow and lose only to grow again, which is a natural cycle as we have the instilled desire to progress. The individual works grapple with the concept of identity in terms of trans-generational emotional inheritance. The work specifically explores the experience of liminality when at an important threshold in life (such as ‘coming of age’); a time when we are constantly looking for affirmation on our uncertain prospects. With this concept in mind, my work is sourced from a very personal nostalgic place exploring the familiarity of home and the precarious potential of inheritance as a tool to move forward or possibly a boundary that limits us.

Each piece is somewhat unstable or ‘used up’, not really knowing the function or potential of the object as it once was. The quality of inheritance’s influence on the trajectory of our lives is experienced as exponential when on the verge of a threshold; a liminal space in which saturation (to rise from inherited fears into successful self-application and independence) presents itself every now and then in the cycle of life. With it comes an opportunity where knowledge empowers a positive attitude and the healthy altitude needed for potential growth. Therefore, having good comprehension of past and present experiences is significant in terms of discovering our cohesive identity.

C. NO MAN’S LAND (Detail), Facial Tissues, 3,2 m x (1 m x 15)

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GABRIELLE VA N D E R M E R W E

T R A N S P O S E , O l d To w e l s , W o o d e n L o c k e r R o o m B e n c h , 2 x 1 m

GABRIELLE VA N D E R M E R W E

V E R G E , To o l b o x a n d V i d e o I n s t a l l a t i o n , 1 x 0 . 6 x 0 . 6 m

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206 ‘ ‘‘henriandnic’’ Exploring the Radical Power of Friendship and Collaboration’

HENRIETTE VAN DER MERWE NICOLA ROBIN Our collaboration initiated during our first year of our fine art undergraduate degree. Coincidently we were paired together for one of the few semi-collaborative projects offered at Michaelis called ‘the clay heads project’. We sculpted each other into two giant, hideous clay heads. We quickly became friends and and an invaluable kind of work began – the upkeep and care of a ‘BFF’ bond that kids, teenagers and adults alike would envy.

attempt to refuse seriousness, adulthood and ‘fine’ art. For us, there is a significant link between laughter and intimacy which we attempt to express through the frameworks of play and participation that we present. Our work plays with the idea of amateur art and how this relates to constructed ideas of success and failure. We look at what happens when we embrace the amateur and

Our friendship became the focus of our exploration into collaboration, performativity within relationships, roles of intimacy and support, the acts of pairing and participating and the expression of these acts via a collective identity we established as henriandnic. These explorations take form in our current body of work Exploring the Radical Power of Friendship and Collaboration, which is largely centred around collective imagining and friendship as a performative gesture. We explore ways of making fun of the artist archetype and its individualised conceptions of art. By overperforming and failing to achieve this role through our shared persona we

explore failing on purpose. Our jokes are predominantly melodramatic and at our own expense. When we adopt roles that are both endearing and embarrassing we are able to laugh at ourselves, creating a non-threatening space which allows for participation in the joke. In a sense it is about claiming insecurities and embracing the aesthetics of failure. We fail one another, fail ourselves and fail the art ideals we encounter. For us, to take these failures and perform them, laugh at them and celebrate them we are able to find a shared creative power and sense of freedom to intervene and interact with the world.

A. henriandnic, Photographic Print, Dimensions Variable

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B. Sad Friends, Video Installation, Dimensions Variable

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H E N R I E T T E VA N D E R M E R W E NICOLA ROBIN

Matthew and Roxy talk henriandnic, Video Installation, Dimensions Variable

‘HENRIANDNIC’ E X P L O R I N G T H E R A D I C A L P O W E R O F F R I E N D S H I P A N D C O L L A B O R AT I O N

The Winner, Video Installation, Dimensions Variable

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A. Pixel Grid, Inkjet Print, 1180 x 1180 mm

211 ‘soft copy’

EVAN WIGDOROWITZ Almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. – Orson Wells, F for Fake (1973)

time and space – an illusion of presence – through techniques such as continuity editing and deep focus cinematography. It has been said that the biggest enemy of truth is not the lie, it is the myth. For it is that the myth is rooted in a certain type of telling – the narrative, the story. In this case the myth is that film is a fourdimensional reality where, in fact, it is a fabricated illusion on a two-dimensional screen. There is an immense gap between what we see on screen and the events that took place in front of and behind the camera. What we watch on screen for an hour and a half is dense in time, planning and labour.

Something that I have always found curious is when some people applaud at the end of a movie. It’s not like a play where the performers are right there on stage, or an award ceremony when the winner is walking to the podium to receive a trophy for their good work. What we see on the screen is a carefully considered fabrication. Of course there is no way that the makers of the film can hear the clapping. So why then is this the reaction of some people? Human beings have sat around campfires for millennia telling and listening to stories – being drawn in by great orators. Laughing, crying, shouting remarks, grumbling, asking questions. With film and screen media in general the nature of engagement is shifted. People go from being participants to watchers. Film is a replicator of a fundamental part of cultural evolution.

Along with the notions of constructed realities and the role of narrative, what is central to this body of work is the copy in many forms – the repeated tropes that are used to feed the audience with a lot of (learned) information quickly, the imitation that an actress has to undergo to play a role, the experience that is shared by the sometimes millions of people that watch the same film. Duplication is also present in the pixel grid structure of the digital screen and sensor, the complex network of digital platforms where media (including films) is shared and what is gained and lost through those processes as well as the overflow of the memetic influence on popular culture that is adopted from films.

Cinema perpetuates the illusion of reality – an actual universe wherein the characters experience pain in the same way that the viewer does and where their actions have real tangible consequences. In other words, the foundation of suspended disbelief. Authors of fiction films stand accused of producing an illusion of shared

B. [Left] Still from Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) / [Right] Still from Mulholland Drive (2001)

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E VA N WIGDOROWITZ

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‘SOFT COPY’

Avatar, Video Still, 162 minutes

214 ‘Body of Water’

GEENA WILKINSON Has anyone ever noticed how people only love the ocean when the sun is out? Once darkness settles, breeze kicks in and sharks come out to play, no one wants to swim among its waves. – Alondra P. in The Artidote (2016) Let feelings lap. Stop being afraid of the waves. Start learning to live with the ocean inside you. Collapse the notion that softness is seen as abject: That which is of the body, but believed not to belong to the body; That which is difficult to contain and crosses bodily borders; An external menace, somehow contained of the body; Simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. The abject should be seen and accepted. Destroy the idea that a soft body is synonymous with a weak body. Destroy the idea that femininity is synonymous with weakness. Destroy the idea that the containment of bodies and thoughts is the ultimate form of control. Destroy the idea that tears are synonymous with weakness when the ocean is one of the most powerful things on the planet, and they are both made of salt water. Destroy the idea that distance is a good vantage point. Destroy the idea that aloofness is synonymous with power. Come closer, Touch and feel. Stop telling people to harden up. Stop telling people to man-up. Destroy the idea that containment governs the ideal. That which can be contained cannot be powerful.

A A. salt, lap, roil, sunny side up (meltdown), surge & lace, Exhibition Detail, Multimedia, Dimensions Variable

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D B. spill (II), Resin, Glass, Slime, Dimensions Variable C . s p i l l ( D e t a i l ) , R e s i n , P l a s t e r, A c r y l i c s , C e m e n t , D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e D. l a p ( S e r i e s ) , F a u x F u r, B a t t i n g , F o a m , T h r e a d , D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e

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GEENA WILKINSON

‘BODY OF W AT E R ’

b o d y o f w a t e r e x h i b i t i o n , M i c h a e l i s G a l l e r i e s , C a p e To w n

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SARAH ZIMMERMANN This body of work aims to investigate and challenge concepts of personal identity, that which is self-defined and that which is shaped and influenced by an ever-present hegemonic patriarchy. By drawing from personal experiences, my work reflects an interrogation of my identity as a womxn, questioning constructs of society’s perceived gender norms and the way patriarchal structures continue to inform identity construction and expression, and therefore the way in which womxn occupy and surmount both public and private spaces. Various works are direct responses to and reinterpretations of existing works by others that reinforce, either explicitly or implicitly, misogynist representations of womxn’s bodies, portraying them as passive, sexualised objects for consumption. By inserting myself into roles that take on the agency the art-makers have afforded themselves in such works, I aim to reclaim this agency and re-establish my identity on my own terms. Masturbation becomes a tool for the reclamation of self and body. The interrogation of catcalling provides a window into the lived experiences of individuals whose bodies continue to be subject to the scrutinies, ‘ownership’ and violence of the patriarchy.

B A. Here I Come, Video Still, Dimensions Variable B . I L i k e Yo u I To u c h Yo u , E L W i r i n g , W o o d , B a t t e r i e s , D i m e n s i o n s Va r i a b l e

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E C. Self Service (part of series), Glitter Screen-Print on Munken, 24 x 30 cm D. C u m S h o t , V i d e o S t i l l s , D i m e n s i o n s V a r i a b l e E. Self Service (part of series), Glitter Screen-Print on Munken, 24 x 30 cm

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SARAH ZIMMERMANN

Sex Ed, Glitter Screen-Print on Munken, 24 x 30 cm

SARAH ZIMMERMANN

TOP: Come Baby Give Me A Smile, EL Wiring, Wood, Batteries, Dimensions Variable BOT TOM: Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m Gonna Fuck You Girl, EL Wiring, Wood, Batteries, Dimensions Variable

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222 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;QOBOQOBOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

XHANTI ZWELENDABA Ndithetha ngeentlanga ezithe zohlutwa ubuni, izithethe, amasiko, umhlaba wabo wathinjwa, neenkolo zabo. Zonke ezo zinto zanyhashelwa phantsi. Imifanekiso eqingqiweyo yamaqhawe abo yatshatyalaliswa. Amaphupha abo anyamalala. Ndithetha ngamadoda nabafazi ohluthelwa indlela ababephila ngayo nezinto ababekholelwa kuzo. Uloyiko yinto emiliselwe ezingcanjini zengqondo zabo. Abantu abazithathela phantsi kunezinye iintlanga bafundiswa ukubusa nokuguqa kuzo. Indyebo yabo yendalo yasuswa kuba, nelungelo lokuphumelela latshabalala. Zonke izinto ezililungelo kubo zabiwa zintlanga zasemzini.

A. 9:11, Video Still

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B. Video Still C. Video Still

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XHANTI ZWELENDABA

‘QOBOQOBO’

Video Still

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CONTACT INDEX

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STUDENT

PHONE

Abraham, Cathy 0824408282 cathyjabraham@gmail.com Ahjum, W. M. 0724077787 wolfram09@gmail.com Allan, Emily 0769833237 eallan33@hotmail.com Ann, Ceil 0836352312 ceilann22@gmail.com Bassin, Carli 0764711930 carlibassin@gmail.com Berens, Georgina 0797104284 georgina.berens@gmail.com Botha, Olivia 0764022826 oliviabotha@icloud.com Buys, Fanie 0795220945 scbuys@gmail.com Bydawell, Tarryn bydtar002@myuct.ac.za Calder, Leighton 0785131113 leightoncalder@hotmail.com Chandler, Christopher James 0842992064 cjchandler17@icloud.com Chimwaza, Chiedza 0793229249 cecemanee@yahoo.com Ciani, Caterina 0735307303 caterina@cianijewellers.com Critchfield, Kayla 0827668251 kayla.february@gmail.com Dada, Khanyisa dadamarshfellow@gmail.com Davis, Greta 0795015754 greta.davis@hotmail.com Foulis, Isabella 0761143233 isabellafoulis@gmail.com Green, Tegan 0849031899 tegangreenar t@gmail.com Gupta, Srijit 0604905711 guptasrijit93@gmail.com Holdengarde, Jessica-Anne 0745883322 jessholdy@gmail.com Howard-Tripp, Stephen 0781786179 stephen.howard.tripp@gmail.com Jacobs, Laylaa 0829326821 laylaaj@gmail.com Jansen Van Rensburg, Lindi 0820621144 linpin17@yahoo.com Kaczmarek, Alexandra 0834064360 azofiakaczmarek@gmail.com Kim, Ju Eun 0611860146 ueun001@gmail.com Law, Marianne Thesen 0849456642 mptylaw@gmail.com Lee, Kyu Sang 0716436198 info@kyusanglee.com Maharaj, Sinead 0833569309 sineadykins@gmail.com Martinson, Charlie 0837859456 charlie.cmar t@gmail.com Matlhape, Mathlongonolo +26776183801 mathlomatlhape@yahoo.com Millward, Saara 0605573923 saaramillward@hotmail.com

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STUDENT

PHONE

Mitchell, Kym 0748601214 kymitchell02@gmail.com Moonsamy, Shadai 0812703043 shadaimoonsamy@gmail.com Moosa, Mariam 0725478670 mariammoosa661@gmail.com Mulenga, Aaron 0726213387 rn_mulenga@yahoo.com MĂźller, Stephani 0812804223 stephani-m@hotmail.com Nkoana, Elizabeth 0762389487 elizabethnkn@gmail.com Ntloni, Asemahle 0820848959 aseztoure2@gmail.com Oelofse, Alex 0784988430 oelefsealex@gmail.com Othusitse, Mosinyiemang +26774356004 mosinyiothusitse@yahoo.com Reusch, Lara 0795350120 lara@peakpi.com Robin, Nicola 0741059251 henriandnic@gmail.com nicolarobin17@gmail.com Robson, Lucy 0767732762 lucymrobson@me.com Rodrigues, Tiago 0720654843 iamtiagorodrigues@gmail.com Roos, Nicola 0827856576 n.roos94@gmail.com Sanson, Gabrielle 0724480780 hello@gabriellesanson.com Serraf, Micha 0832047824 hello@thecapetownphotographer.com Stanley, Joshua 0766478560 thisiskelt@gmail.com Stanwix, Benjamin 0724609369 benstanwix@gmail.com Strauss, Ilse strils001@myuct.ac.za Strauss, Jase 0732035204 straussjase@gmail.com Tlabela, Katlego 0843103280 katlegotlabela@gmail.com Van Der Merwe, Gabrielle 0765488706 gabi.vdm@gmail.com Van Der Merwe, Henriette 0794965952 henriandnic@gmail.com henriettevandermerwe@gmail.com Wessels. Anel 0823574712 anelwessels92@gmail.com Wigdorowitz, Evan 0724526015 evanwig@gmail.com Wilkinson, Geena 0730219186 geenawilkinson@gmail.com Zimmermann, Sarah 0796993711 sarahzimmerwomxn@gmail.com Zwelendaba, Xhanti 0848919970 xhantizwelendaba@gmail.com

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the staff of Michaelis School of Fine Art for their advice and assistance. We would also like to extend a special thank you and recognise the incredible assistance we have all received from the support staff over the years, they have gone out of their way to make all our nearimpossible works a reality. Thank you to all the individuals who have contributed bottles for our Early Friday Artist raffle over the years. A special thanks to all the contributors to our Michaelis Silent Auction that took place in 2016, Eclectica Contemporary for the use of their venue and the following individuals for their donations: Jane Alexander David Brits Julia Rosa Clark Herman de Klerk Dominique Edwards Georgina Gratrix Svea Josephy Isabella Kuijers Fritha Langeman Mitchell Gilbert Messina Gitte MĂśller Janet Ranson Berni Searle Leonard Shapiro (for the donation of Norman Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Flynn) Pippa Skotnes (for the donation of Cecil Skotnes) Rowan Smith Ruby Swinney Jeanette Unite Chris van Eeden Ed Young Michaela Younge

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