Preface
by
ANASTATIA NKHUNA
Tarsila do Amaral
by
LUCIANA MALETE
Adriana Varejao
by
PULANE SEREMA
In Dialogue LUCIANA MALETE
PULANE SEREMA
Lorna Simpson
by
ZANDILE TSHABALALA
Hanna Hock
by
HLENGIWE MABASO
In Dialogue
ZANDILE TSHABALALA
Conclusion
by
ZANDILE TSHABALALA
HLENGIWE MABASO
PAGES 7
PAGES 8-13
PAGES 14-20
PAGES 21
PAGES 22-27
PAGES 28-33
PAGES 34
PAGES 36-37
ANASTATIA NKHUNA WRITER EDITOR LUCIANA MALETE WRITER GRAPHICS AND LAYOUT PULANE SEREMA WRITER ZANDILE TSHABALALA WRITER HLENGIWE MABASO WRITER GRAPHICS AND LAYOUT
F. ART
PREFACE Modernism is a global movement in society and culture that seeks alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. The artists create artworks that they felt reflected the realities and hopes of modern societies. Mignolo says the hidden side of modernity was coloniality (Mignolo 2011: 2). And the consequences of modernity included slavery, genocide and environmental crisis. The focus in this book is to offer a contextualization of the artworks produced by four women and to highlight if they either converge or diverge from each other and the way in which they overlap or create a dialogue. They are separated into pairings the first pair is Tarsila do Amaral and Adriana Varejao both of Brazilian nationality. The second pair is Hannah Hoch a German artist and Lorna Simpson from the United States.
F. ART
Tarsila do Amaral
Luciana Malete
BRAZIL
1886-1973
do Amaral, T. 1923. A Negra. Museo de Arte Contemporânea de Universidade de São Paulo
Tarsila do Amaral was born in 1886 in Sao Paulo where she spent her childhood on a coffee plantation yet had later ventured off to Paris thus becoming the agitator of Modernism in Brazil by fusing the respective styles and colour. This period was called post abolition or emancipation, an era that promised much social inclusion butdelivered much social exclusion to black men and women. Tarsila returns here a canvas that today in a period of colonialism and criticism of Eurocentrism she represents Brazil with its native landscape,culture and people full of stereotypes of the plantation. Her work A negra (1923) which translates from Portuguese as “the black� is a depiction of a disproportionate abundant nude figure that is contrasted by flat geometric elements in the background of the white, blue, green and brown that is an evident reference to the european influence to her work.
A negra represents a black woman “mammy” (grandmother) (Damian,1999) assumed to have been enslaved from the plantation, it becomes a visual representation of Brazil’s black labourers society. However, she tries to translate the “new” primitivism that was ernest to the figure with a very small head against a hereditary flooded nose and enlarged lips and above all this, a drooping breast with the expense of massive legs. Although Brazil is typically represented of mostly Portuguese natives the narrative of local African communities (from slave lineage) had been controlled by Europeans. Surfacing the complex issues of geography and issues of gender in Brazil, she asserts the narrative of modernity assimulating it beyond the Brazilian narrative.The distinction of this work critiques the discourse around identity in Brazil that fracture the cultural representation. That underlines the concealed communities of black people in Brazil in art and great society, these misconceptions disregard racial status and suggests racial similitude . However this is not a work of empowerment, her decision to represent Brazil’s dismissed community does not replace the European traditions but merges with the Brazilian context. This asserts a prominent class issue, it privileges her to acquire the traits of European modern art. In this way, she employs european modernist techniques with Brazilian landscape context and exchanges a discourse. Authentic to its period, the alternative narrative of crucial Brazilian culture had developed Brazilian modern art.
Adriana Varejao
Pulane Serema
BRAZIL
1964 -TO PRESENT
Adriana VarejĂŁo (BR), Map of Lopo Homem II , 19922004 oil on wood with suture thread 110 x 140 x 10 cm
Adriana Varejao is an artist from and based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.She was born in 1964. She uses multiple mediums for work namely paintings, sculptures, installations and photographs. Her work often focuses on the results of colonisation in Brazil, the America’s and the globe. Her work speaks on the violence of these encounters.Her one particular work that stands out is the Lopo Homem 1519 World Map which was a distorted map drafted by cartographer Lopo Homem at the behest of King Manuel of Portugal in 1517 (https://www.wdl.org/en/item/18562/). This map had a strongly bordered oval depicting the earth’s continents, within a bordered rectangular sheet of horizontal orientation. At each corner of the rectangular sheet area full cheeked heads blowing air towards the oval map and what seems a depiction of what seems to be a moon and sun respectively at either side of the oval Map. The Brazilian fine artist - Adriana Varejão’s recreation or rather, amendment, of Lopo Homem’s map makes use of multimedia to comment on the state of the contemporary world in the wake of the human and natural destruction and violence that resulted from imperialist pursuit and colonialism (Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, 2019: 195-197).
Varejão recreates the oval aspect of Homem’s remarkable map, in which the continents of the Americas and Asia are conjoined by a non-existent assembly of land curving down from the lower ends of Latin America, southwards in place of Antarctica and up round the border of the oval where it meets the bottom of the Asian continent (Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, 2019: 195-197). This passage of land is entitled ‘Mundus Novus’ by Homem. Varejão uses oil paint, with wood as her canvas, to depict this oval shaped world map, deliberately excluding Homem’s additional details (Varejao, 1992-2004). In the middle of the map, just right off-centre, rests the African continent with Europe and its accompanying seas to the north of it. Below the African Continent is a large body of water, made up of several oceans speckled with clusters of red marks. A big vertical and partly (stitched at the top and open at the bottom) gash that resembles an open wound with drying or dried blood stretches through the Mediterranean sea, down past the eastern side of Africa, stretching all the way south until just before it reaches ‘Mundus Novus’. To the left of it and Africa is a bean-shaped pool of blood. More but less open and smaller gashes are visible in Asia, just off the North American continent and finally, a long, mostly stitched horizontal one cuts across the Latin American and ‘Mundus Novus’ terrain. Varejão encircles her map with a thin white border within a bolder red border with hints of black. The main outline of her work is a thick white outlining border.
In tracing how the history of the America’s was mapped, Varejão engages with the depiction and treatment of these territories as akin to how the colonisers conceived of and engaged with the bodies of those who occupied those colonised territories (Stothart www.adrianavarejão.net 2014). The peoples of these continents were seen as laying bare, waiting to be conquered, to be civilised, by an ordered and advanced people- the Europeans, who would pursue this ‘noble cause’ whilst remaining in the background. Varejão’s modernist, feminist approach brings to life the brutality evidenced by wounds on the earth as well human bodies and human psyches. She anthropomorphizes the world map by rendering it not just as work on a blank sheet but by creating it as an object; using an array of materials such as thread and finishing off with a shiny layer and by adding textural quality to this three dimensional artwork (Dipietro 2007). The blood spilt and the bloody wounds represent the masses affected, encouraging us to look beyond individual incidents Adriana Varejão’s Map of Lopo Homem II encourages us to look at the world map differently, beyond the already distorted dimensions we are presented with through the current world map order (Dipietro 2007). Her work shows us to look at the very act of the European exploratory voyages to map and possess the world as inherently violent endeavours for most of the earth’s population, and not just as a by-product of an apparent ‘civilizing’ cause.
do ARMARAL & VAREJAO in Dialogue Tarsila do Amaral and Adriana Varejao’s own lives converge, albeit with no relation or interaction with each other, briefly as do Amaral passed on four years after Varejao’s. Together, their lives cover the experience of being women in Brazil from the country’s abolition of slavery in 1888 to contemporary times in which Varejao still produces socially and politically activist modern art, as if creating a continuum of the same or similar experiences since that period onward. Both their works are reflective of the modern art movement spurred on by both European industrialisation influences as well as that in Brazil which were marked by the transition from plantation to more mechanised economies and the social changes those present in their country of birth. This synthesis can be seen in the clear employ of hard and soft lines in do Amaral’s A negra (1923) and Varejao’s use of an old European map, amended to express the violent effects Europe has had on the wider world. Both artists anthropomorphize their subject matter, delving deep into Brazil’s colonial experience as well as its repercussions on the land, the people and the psyche of the environment.
Hannah Hoch
Hlengiwe Mabaso
GERMANY
1889 -1978
Hannah Hรถch, Untitled, From an Ethnographic Museum, 1930. Photomontage.
This artwork falls part of a series called From an Ethnographic Museum created by German photomontage artist, Hannah Höch, in the years 1924-1934. Höch pieces together images, in a juxtaposed fashion, of imagery that is deemed modern with that of the colonial ‘Other’. Some of the pieces make use of images of women and African ethnographic elements, such as ethnic masks, to showcase how race and gender politics are socially coded and commodified in print media (Kosberg, 2018). Höch’s interaction with illustrated magazines allowed her work to be a critique of collective thought, mainstream fears, and social norms within the Weimar era in which she lived.This particular untitled piece is one of the few where Höch’s use of colour and cut-and-paste elements are at a minimal.
The photomontage displays a figure at the bottom half of a black male body; the viewer sees from the waist down. The muscular legs are spread apart in what seems to be in a dance position; this is concluded by the dance shoes that are at the feet. This figure is paired with a carved mask. It can be concluded that the mask is of a woman because of the bun hairstyle-like carving on its head. The mask has its eyes down, closed. The expression is flat, almost of indifference. The mentioned pieces of the work are placed against a cut out black piece of paper which is pasted onto a bordered and cut out blue-green background. The photomontage is framed by a brown border. This work explores binary oppositions of male/female, movement/rigidness, and muscularly sculpted/wooden sculpted. The juxtaposition of these concepts points to the functions of patriarchal systems and, as a result, the stillness of women through the process of the sculpturing of the mask. However, the mask carries an unbothered stance; almost to say that you can be as muscularly sculpted as you like, move in grand gestures but I, woman, hold true “phallic power”. This reading is conflicted in how it still places the woman in a sexualised position. Höch could be praised on how she challenged Weimar Germany’s (consequently the Western world’s) white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies; how she used the photomontage as an aesthetic tool for protest, liberation and evolution. However, it is important to note that the series can be read as carrying racial and ethnological ignorance. Masks from any African ethnical group represent ancestral spirits. Is it known that the spirits possesses the human body upon the wearing of the mask. With this context and Höch’s use of the masks as “worn” by different Western bodies, the series can be read as a process of synthesization. The use of these different elements suggests integration, a merging of the unfamiliar with the known to create an unexpected sight. However, even though From an Ethnographic Museum functions to destabilise western normality through construction and reconstruction, Höch enters the intimate frame of the ‘Other’ where appropriation is displayed through her ambivalent approach to her creations.
Lorna Simpson
Zandile Tshabalala
U.S.A
1960 -TO PRESENT
Lorna Simpson Riunite and Ice #16.2015. Collage and ink on paper . 30x22. Framed
Riunite and Ice #16 is a work made of collage and ink on paper. The collaged images include that of a cut out portrait of an African American woman who wears a chunky extravagant necklace and matching earrings. On her lower body Lorna has added a body of a woman who lays on the floor with her belly down, chest towards the viewer and her legs back. In replacement of the portraits hair, an image of a wooden building sits upside down, positioned like a headpiece on top of the woman’s head. Various posters are seen in the foreground of the building.
Portrait: Lorna Simpson has cut the portrait of the African- American woman in an Ebony magazine. Ebony was first published in November 1945, and consists of news on black people, black history and imagery of black people. The woman depicted was seemingly an advertising model who served the purpose of selling products to other African-American woman of her time. The image is used repetitively in the series evoking the thought of the images of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti who has been countlessly used as an icon for the power of black womanhood. Body: The image of the body is depicted in black and white thus creating uncertainty as to which race the figure belongs to. The positioning of the body flat on the ground with her chest to the viewer creates room for the painting to be read either as another one of the images used mostly in commercial advertising whereby the woman is put in a position to be objectified. The image can also be read as a moment of leisure and relaxation. Together with the head the image again reminds the viewer of Queen Nefertiti and gives the impression that the figure sits in the leisure that her power has privileged her with. Head: The building depicted in the image seems unoccupied or as if it has been neglected. The only traces of human existence in the building are the posters outside although it is unclear what has been written on them or what event they are meant for. The context of the overall image in unclear.The placement of the building as a headpiece in replacement of the portraits actual hair plays a significant role as in most of the artist’s work hair is distorted and collaged expressing the overall complexities and diversity of black hair.Lorna Simpson challenges the viewer’s perspective on black women and the representation of black women’s beauty standards. By constantly placing portraits of black women in her work in a similar style she puts emphasis on their existence and significance especially in a world that constantly belittles them. Her reference to images from the past reflects her nostalgia and interest in African-American history which she constantly attempts to revive in her work.
HOCH & SIMPSON in Dialogue Hoch and Simpson both display skills in creating photo collage pieces that hold social commentary value. The two artists’ works speak to the time and space in which they lived in respectively, both centered around challenging the portrayal of women in print media. Simpson looks at the representation of black women and contests the western depiction of them by placing them in positions of power and representing them in a goddess-like manner, adorned with crown -like headpieces. This juxtaposes the western representation of black women as naive, sexual beings, who are constantly submissive and belittled. Hoch uses the method of the collage to contend gender roles by placing different genders in compromising positions which are rarely depicted for public consumption. The display of fragmented bodies opens up for a dialogue on gender perceptions and the destabilization of social norms. One can see how these four artists have addressed issues of coloniality that come with modernism. To elaborate, the artists include elements in their work that draws the viewer back to ideas of coloniality. For instance, Hannah Hoch’s inclusion of African Masks to address issues of ethnicity and difference, Lorna Simpson’s use of black, mostly female, portraits to address issues of representation and black history that is not publicized, Adriana Varejo’s uses of mix media to speak about the violent effects European industrialisation influences have on Brazil when Tarsila do Amaral uses soft lines in her work which employs European modernist techniques with Brazillian landscape contexts which exchanges a dialogue with them.
F. ART
CONCLUSION One can see how these four artists have addressed issues of coloniality that come with modernism. To elaborate, the artists include elements in their work that draws the viewer back to ideas of coloniality. For instance, Hannah Hoch’s inclusion of African Masks to address issues of ethnicity and difference, Lorna Simpson’s use of black, mostly female, portraits to address issues of representation and black history that is not publicized, Adriana Varejo’s uses of mix media to speak about the violent effects European industrialisation influences have on Brazil when Tarsila do Amaral uses soft lines in her work which employs European modernist techniques with Brazillian landscape contexts which exchanges a dialogue with them.
F. ART
F. ART
feminist
Art