VIRAL IMAGES, a solo exhibition by Johandi du Plessis

A

solo exhibition by JOHANDI DU PLESSIS

VIRAL IMAGES

VIRAL IMAGES

A solo exhibition by JOHANDI DU PLESSIS

Oliewenhuis Art Museum

Bloemfontein, South Africa 24 November 2022 – 12 February 2023

NIROX Sculpture Park

Cradle of Humankind, Krugersdorp, South Africa 7 May – 31 August 2022

This catalogue and exhibitions of artworks are presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Masters’ degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Free State, South Africa, in the Faculty of the Humanities, Departments of Fine Arts, and Art History and Image Studies.

moving and leaping images

The portfolio of artworks exhibited here beckons questions about the nature and characteristics of images, as they are hosted in a variety of artistic media. Many of the artworks engage with the idea of social imaginaries, that is, the many ways in which we imagine ourselves through the images or ideas we carry within our bodies, and the many ways in which we express them in pictures, stories, and legends (Taylor 2004: 32). I observe how images influence the way in which we imagine ourselves to be, in time and place.

As a ‘born-free’ from an Afrikaans-speaking family and schooled in English, I was exposed to disparate social imaginaries which shaped me in many ways. My upbringing, at the same time, opened my eyes to the transitioning and transformative potential of images. I have continuously been intrigued by the ambiguous ways in which images are sometimes appropriated in logos, letterheads, typefaces, branding, advertisements, books, and packaging. My mother worked as a graphic designer at a large printing press, which exposed me to different machines, processes, tools, and ways of planning, producing, and disseminating images and pictures. A foundational year in architecture in 2010 further exposed me to the ways image objects acquire new meanings when placed in new contexts.

The idea that an image has the potential to go ‘viral’ on various platforms is not entirely new since images are continually transitioning. If images occur, rather than exist (Boehm 2021 & Belting 2005), I am prompted to ask: Do images have social lives? Images become

increasingly appropriated due to technological advances and online social networks. My artworks were inspired by the metaphor of the housecat, the most popular animal on the internet, to evoke the viral potential of images to suddenly leap and spiral out of control. In this way, images may seem to acquire lives of their own and acquire agency. The contradiction of a domestic cat that cannot be fully contained or tamed has been observed throughout history, and for me points to the paradoxical and ambiguous qualities of the image. Images, like cats, seem to possess the capacity to shapeshift in order to escape confinement or human control. Like felines, images may even, stalk, surprise, and frighten us. Through observing images, searching for images, reading, and writing about them, and through my own art-making processes, I have witnessed the agency, unpredictability, and persistence of images. Images seem to shapeshift between materialized pictures, and inner images and dreams. At times, images seem to be under control, and appear to be safe and homely. But at other times and in other places, images may seem to have a will and way of their own. Some artworks exhibited here suggest memes, also referred to as “cat pictures”, which are understood as being ‘viral’ on online social networks. What is fascinating about memes and about images in general, is that we not only look at them, but, seemingly, they look back at us. Why do we jerk, spontaneously laugh or even feel shame when looking at pictures? Why do they sometimes make us respond in unexpected ways? What do pictures want? the image and media theorist, W.J.T. Mitchell, asks. We hold a “double consciousness”

(Mitchell 2005: 7) of images, he says, in the sense that we behave towards images as if they have lives of their own, and possess power, and even desires. Despite this, we are also sceptical and know that at the same time, they are not alive and are simply ‘just pictures’. We ascribe power to images, as affirmed when image objects such as statues or paintings are attacked and defaced. So, to answer the question about whether images have social lives, I suggest that images are able to function as transitional objects or devices, and as mediators among people, people and power, people and their own fears and desires, and in other relationships.

The cat metaphor is made more apparent in some artworks, such as the installation Cat study (2020-2022) and the interactive and performative installation playing dead LOL (2020-2022). In other artworks, the metaphor is less apparent, but may be subtly suggestive of potential cat-like energy.

I compare the ways in which a seemingly dead cat can suddenly and unpredictably jump or roll erratically and playfully, to the way in which images sometimes may seem to leap, unpredictably, among media, physical materials and concepts to generate diverse artworks. The media I use include sculpture; installation; digital drawing and painting; digital interventions; GIF-based animations; and cellphone and pinhole photography. Some of the artworks have

moving components as well as sonic elements. The materials used and appropriated vary from the traditional to the alternative and the banal. Whether conceptual or digital, the artworks remain sensitive to their materiality. Some of the artworks may be touched, picked up and played with.

Taking note of encounters while working, such as a cat obstructing my keyboard and screen, making a surprise and demanding appearance while on a serious online Zoom meeting, or of a serendipitous mark created, similar to a cat stepping on an area of wet paint, made me aware of their playful, but also disruptive character. Images not only mediate, but disrupt, as is often revealed in memes and counterimages shared online.

Installation shot from Cat Study (2020-2022)

These observations, arising in my studio during sensual encounters between myself as artist, and cats, my artwork, and my laptop or cellphone screen, made me more sensitive to my own sensual and bodily engagements: the ways in which I engage with images in my research and artmaking, how my body, movements and gestures are shaped and altered, by the processes of making these artworks. As a result, some of my artworks are the outcome of sensitive, performative, and bodily engagements with images, devices, places, and cats. Thus, the cat becomes a metaphor for these ambiguous relationships with images and the viral potential of images developed in my research and studio work. Many of my artworks have been appropriated and reworked multiple times, in subtle or more drastic ways.

Installation shot from DStv MultiChoice (2017-2022)

In politics, the expression “dead cat strategies” suggests that images may be controlled, or managed, like dead cats - as was attempted by the (now-defunct) British PR firm Bell Pottinger to aid in the capturing of the South African state by spreading disinformation. However, I hold the opposing belief that images are in reality enigmatic and mysterious like live cats and that they undermine, challenge and problematise any attempts at ‘image management’ as part of diversion strategies. The exhibited artworks exploit the cat metaphor in terms of image theory, because, since images migrate among various objects, places, and social domains, they cut through and reveal the economic, cultural, political, and psychological fibres of society. Most of the works probe image clashes that have been provoked by the social, political and/or economic disruptions and changes experienced in post-apartheid South Africa.

I believe that images and the nostalgic humorous image clashes that I observe in post-apartheid South Africa reveal collective intergenerational trauma, anxiety, and diverse experiences of loss. Some artworks, comparable to memes, respond to the way in which nostalgia and humour are employed to mitigate anxiety, loss, and desire. Topical viral events are explored, and some artworks result from a continued fascination with and interrogation of images and their spread throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the online/ offline experiences during lockdown.

viral (pictures) as a form of image agency

Shapeshifter

2019-2022

Pinhole photography printed on Fine Art quality archival Hahnemühle German Etching 267 x 400 mm (diptych, each)

Shapeshifter is a diptych of two pinhole photographs I took of my cat perched on an interior windowsill. Naval Hill (around which Bloemfontein as a city developed), is partially visible in the background of one of the photographs). In the photograph on the left, the shadowy silhouette of the cat’s body is barely discernable, with only its ears and its arched back protruding and resembling beacons or hills on the horizon. Thus, the shadow of the cat could be imagined to be a cat or potentially anything else. In the photograph on the right, the shadow has changed shape and the outlines become even less defined as the cat’s body has moved from a ‘bread bun’ position to an upright sitting position. I find that the pinhole medium’s surprise element, or its lack of control creates a sense of ambiguity and ambivalence, which dovetails with those same characteristics of the cat, as well as these aspects of images. Since the pinhole camera does not have a lens that the photographer can manipulate to focus on a specific area in the fore- or background, the cat figure seems, for me, to transgress or shapeshift to the outside and back to the interior again. Thus, the changing and moving shadow suggests the imagination’s ability to potentially create images out of mere shapes.

Shapeshifter was first exhibited as a small diptych in the exhibition ‘Betwixt and Between’ in the Scaena Gallery at the University of the Free State as part of the Free State Arts Festival in 2019.

Following spread: Shapeshifter (2019-2022)

Pinhole photography printed on Fine Art quality archival Hahnemühle German Etching paper, 267x400mm (diptych, each)

Cat study

Conceptualized between 2020-2022, with objects collected over many years Mixed-media installation including found and altered objects: cat objects, toys, trinkets, figurines, ornaments, cat hairball and cat fur; cat skulls; wooden desks, and chairs 1740 x 5350 x 5600 mm

Cat study is suggestive of a cabinet of curiosities, historically a ‘cabinet of wonder’ which was a feature in the Renaissance, containing collections of a variety of diverse curious objects, from natural specimens to ‘strange’ hybrids. For me this installation becomes a site of investigation and interrogation of the cat as metaphor for certain aspects of images, such as their viral potential, subversiveness, and transgressive character, their ability to migrate and move, their portentous powers, and their ability to corrupt and look back at us.

This collection of cat objects is the result of various transactions, migrations, engagements, and negotiations. Some cat objects have been gifted to me over many years, whereas others have been inherited, many have been bought from second-hand stores, and others from commercial stores. Some have been acquired through negotiation and agreement. The collection of objects spans many years and the objects hail from different countries. Multiple maneki neko (lucky/beckoning cat in Japanese) objects make visible how one ‘image’ may be appropriated in various forms which subtly shift in meaning with each change. For example, one of the maneki nekos consists of three diverse sized, but exact copies, contained in one

object, and reminds one of a mirror image reflected endlessly.

A viewer closely observing this maneki neko will also see three reflections of themselves, each reflection reduced incrementally in size. Another lucky cat has an immovable arm, but functions as a type of I-Ching, as it gives you an answer after having given it a shake. Another is a hybrid of a maneki neko and a Russian nesting doll.

Although the individual desktops and the contents in the drawers are grouped, they are also cross-referenced. These groups articulate aspects of images mentioned in the introduction. The installation includes chairs as an invitation to engage with the collection.

Facing page and following spreads: installation shots from Cat Stiudy (2020-2022)

Table theme: the potential of images to move, migrate, and transform

Table theme: the potential of images to move, migrate, and transform (continued)

Table theme: the subversive and transgressive character of images

Table theme: fat cats and dead cat strategies

Following spread: Table theme: portentous powers

Table theme: the ability of images to look back at us

FOAF (A friend of a friend told me…)

2020GIF-based animation (online and offline) Dimensions variable

During lockdown level five of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, I created FOAF, an online GIF-based animation, as part of a viral, online art experiment. The online experiment was initiated by the Free State Art Collective, of which I am a member. The title “A friend of a friend told me…” is suggestive of something ‘going viral’: how it may mutate and seem to gain a life of its own. GIFS are usually memes. A GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a short and very simple animation. It is of low resolution and thus a small file size which means that it uses very little data and plays instantly without having to wait for it to download. It is typically animated between six and fifteen seconds and ‘lives online’. These characteristics of a GIF mean that it is ‘viral material’ – easy to make, view and share. Going ‘viral’ on the internet is associated with the new, frightening, and dangerous spread and mutation of a virus. The spread of (mis)information related to the COVID pandemic, which went viral on the internet, also became frightening and dangerous.

Installation shots from FOAF (A friend of a friend told me…) (2020-)

Yet simultaneously during lockdowns and times of physical and social distancing, online platforms had the positive function of fostering connection and friendship. FOAF is looped, repeating endlessly. Through meticulous drawing and painterly digital marks, the stop-frame animated GIF disrupts these characteristics of typical viral pictures.

FOAF initially only ‘lived online’, and was not bound to a physical device or space. It was shared via the Facebook and Instagram pages of the Free State Art Collective. Afterwards, the artwork was selected as part of an online exhibition of the William Humphrey’s Art Gallery in Kimberley. I have since appropriated the animation into a new form as part of a mixed-media installation, where it is displayed on a cellphone that is connected to numerous knotted cables. This variation of the artwork was exhibited as part of the relatively new and local art competition, Phatshoane Henney New Breed in 2021. Subsequently, it was again recontextualized as part of the ‘Are you game?’ exhibition at Oliewenhuis Art Museum’s Annex, and was on show from the end of 2021 until the start of 2022. It may be viewed as a GIF online at https://media.giphy.com/media/eJAe3GSSCBV9kQqdrf/giphydownsized-large.gif

Screenshots from FOAF (A friend of a friend told me…) (2020)

Playful transitional clashes

Screening: DStv MultiChoice 2019-2022

Some elements obtained from my material environment and various digital and analogue interfaces: fiberglass resin; plaster of paris; black and blue spray paint; sunlight Dimensions variable

The mixed-media installation comprises numerous destroyed and fragmented casts of DStv decoders in plaster of paris and resin. The artwork responds to a 2019 viral episode when supporters of the popular South African musician Steve Hofmeyr smashed, destroyed, ‘drowned’, shot and ‘braaied’ (barbequed) their decoders. High-pitched, emotionally charged DStv/Hofmeyr videos of these incidents were then posted on social media after DStv had removed (censored, or ‘screened’) the musician’s music and movies from their network. Hofmeyr is an Afrikaans icon, but also a person who uses media to publish controversial and problematic comments and statements related to race relationships. The banning by DStv transformed latent desires and tensions into conflict and sparked energetic, obsessive behaviour from followers.

In Screening: DStv MultiChoice I draw attention to the physical decoder device at the center of the digital frenzy. In the Facebook users’ destructions of the decoders, the devices physically clashed with bodies and other objects, and thus became physically altered and transformed. The broken and splintered DStv casts reveal the plaster of paris material underneath the paint. I used plaster of paris as sculptural material, and was also thinking about plaster of paris

with reference to the injured body, specifically as remedial material for the broken, wounded, or fractured body. The materialization of mental images and the internalization of material images - the dynamic of images shaped by the social imaginary and the social imaginary as shaped by images – is thus investigated. I was moreover intrigued by the idea that the videos could not have gone viral without the destruction of the decoders, and that the destruction of the decoders could not have been made visible without the creation of videos. ‘Screening’ in the title of the artwork paradoxically suggests both screening as ‘censoring’ – that may be considered an iconoclastic act – and screening in the sense of ‘showing’.

Screening: DStv MultiChoice was conceptualized and created at the time of the viral episode and shortly after, was exhibited at Sasol New Signatures Top 100 Art Competition. Since then, I was invited to exhibit the artwork as part of ‘Interface’ – a twopart exhibition concerned with the questions and implications of presenting exhibitions digitally/virtually due to lockdown’s physical barring from galleries and museums. The first part of ‘Interface’ was a virtual exhibition in 2021 hosted on a website and the second part, a physical exhibition at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery at the University of the Free State in 2022. The artwork was appropriated slightly for, respectively, the ‘online’ and ‘offline’ exhibitions.

These two pages and following spreads: installation shots and details from Screening: DStv MultiChoice (2017-2022)

insight: into and outside the screen 2021

Silver based C-type print on metallic gloss paper, diasec-mounted 597 x 841 mm

While working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic on one of the coldest winter-days, I took my laptop and moved to the sunniest room. After having worked on it for some time, my laptop battery died, and the screen went off. But instead of being confronted with the sleeping screen’s usual dark look, popularly called a “black mirror” – that darkly reflects an image of myself – I was met with an unexpected and intriguing layering, reflection, and refraction of pictures. Various fingerprints left behind from my tracing over the many displayed art images were suddenly revealed as the stark winter sun shone through the glass window and the security bars behind me.

These marks, however, were not merely finger smudges. In the vivid sun, they became glowing, painterly, bodily, sensual encounters. I took a photograph with my cellphone of what was in front of me, including the reflection of my head, of my horizontal cellphone and of my finger’s vague silhouette.

The various layers do not necessarily form a coherent, harmonious image, yet there is a friction between them and in a sense these layers may seem to clash with one another, producing a rather fragmentary image.

insight: into and outside the screen (2021), diasec print, 597 x 841 mm

Some of the elements which are contained and interacted with are from my material environment in the form of dust; hair; liquid crystal glass as well as various digital, analogue and imaginative/immaterial interfaces: laptop; digital images; fingerprints and their erasures; sunlight; blue Free State sky; reflections; distortions; mobile phone; shadows; the confines of my house; thus, including the imaginary and the imagination.

Instead of alluding to the sleek, “black mirror” I consider the complex, entangled – not necessarily easily separable – layering–and-clashing, with and between humans, technologies, networks, images, the environment. I consider materiality, embodiment, and estrangement. In this way, the artwork is suggestive of the black Obsidian scrying mirror; a medium and space that invites the art viewer to look, read ‘in to’ the image, and imaginatively partake of the complexity of working from home, on a laptop, during the pandemic.

insight: into and outside the screen was exhibited at Sasol New Signatures Top 100 in 2021 where many artworks responded to the pandemic as well as lockdown.

White elephant table

2020-2022

Interactive mixed-media installation including a plastic and metal white fold-away table; various found objects, some with corporate branding; old and new newspapers, and digitally printed newsprint Dimensions variable

The installation is presented as a ‘white elephant sale’ – typically unwanted or unused bric-à-brac donated for sale at church bazaars or other fundraising events - and explores the appropriation, reclamation and transition of image objects, including their logos and branding, on crockery, books and souvenirs, from eras before, during and after apartheid. For me, the white elephant table as concept is suggestive of loss, guilt, burden, and inheritance. Objects donated to white elephant sales are typically objects that have no use anymore. These objects are often inherited, and one may feel stuck being the custodian of such a family archive of objects. One may feel guilt when thinking of discarding them. Donating these objects to fundraising events may therefore absolve some guilt as it is for a ‘good cause’. White elephant objects may also be viewed as transitional objects as they often get passed on to the next generation, or even sold-off to second-hand stores and then passed along to interested owners. Some of the objects in the installation are inherited, e.g., a ‘du Plessis’ branded bell, as well as coins. The majority of the objects, however, were discovered in thrift stores, for next to nothing. The installation contains carefully selected objects, such as corporate branded

household/commemorative items; cups, saucers, bowls, ashtrays, and spoons, as well as some books, that were once precious keepsakes. Many of these objects may be regarded as nostalgic since they are branded with apartheid-era place names, cultural and commemorative events or the names and designs of state and private companies. The once sought-after Voortrekker Monument commemorative bowl and an Eskom mug are examples. Although some objects are from after the apartheid era, I have included objects, for example, like official government published letters that contain the same, but slightly transformed and re-appropriated logos and letterheads that inappropriately persist as state paraphernalia in a post-apartheid environment. The objects range from being unwrapped, wrapped and semi-unwrapped in newspapers and newly printed newsprint that contains the re-appropriation and transition of some of the government and corporate brands. The wrapped, semi-(un)wrapped and unwrapped states are suggestive of a continual covering, unveiling, protection, transitioning and pervasive exposure of objects and image objects that form part of various and conflicting social imaginaries.

Facing page and following spreads: installation shots from White Elephant Table (2020-2022)

Power trip

The National Flower of South Africa

2017-2022

A series of two artworks, a digital drawing in the form of a digital pigment print on museum-quality archival Cotton Rag and as a GIF-based animation 937 x 1500 mm (print) and dimensions variable (GIF)

The National Flower of South Africa is a digitally created drawing of the King Protea and exists as a series of two artworks: a large print of the digital drawing as well as a GIF animation. The artwork engages with State Capture in general, the largest post-apartheid corruption and information scandal. More specifically, the artwork explores the #GuptaLeaks and the consequent exposé of global consultancy agencies in aiding the capturing of the South African state, such as the now-defunct British PR firm Bell Pottinger, McKinsey and Company, and Baines and Company. The King Protea is South Africa’s national flower, which has been widely re-appropriated and re-imagined for this purpose in South African history. In the printed digital drawing, the flower is mostly drawn as outlines and dashed lines to suggest a draft or a new design of the emblem. As in a draft design, some areas of the artwork are worked into more intensely. The artwork responds to catch phrases and potentially viral images propagated by Bell Pottinger, who used Twitter bots and website campaigns to promote the capturing of the state. The King Protea is invaded by foreign currency and exchange: Dirham coins as well as the logos of Bell Pottinger and other companies related to state capture that I have appropriated to resemble hybrid viruses/insects which in

some places are disguised as parts of the flower and in other places are more exposed. Arabesque-like motifs form part of the newly appropriated South African emblem. A South African 20 cents coin showing the King Protea on its obverse is the only coin drawn at an angle and with varied blurred marks that suggests a precarious casting of a wish, which seems out of place as the only coin that is not drawn flat.

Logos of the Guptas’ companies Oak Bay Investments and Sahara computers are propagated into radial patterns suggestive of a toxic dynamism. In addition to the radial, fractal-like patterns, other elements, such as the United Arab Emirates’ Dirham coins are cloned and copied to suggest propagation and a type of digital wishing well. The ambiguous wishing well suggests the conflicting dreams and desires of South Africans: greed and the actual loss of South African investment when money is siphoned off to other countries through irregular business practices. Thus, the draining of South Africa’s natural resources is in contrast to the wish for creating an economically viable country.

The text in the artwork, apart from the other logos, are set in the same typeface as the Bell Pottinger logos. The text contains slogans

and content from the Bell Pottinger website, tweets from the Twitter bots, email exchanges between Bell Pottinger and individuals involved in state capture, as well as idioms about pots. Overlaid, transformed, and reflected letters ‘B’ and ‘P’ in the same font type are combined to resemble insects which are in some instances mirrored. Small bells, specifically in the form of the digital ‘notification’ icon, appear to move towards the center of the flowerhead. The GIF is a short stop-frame animation that loops on a large television screen that hangs on the opposite wall of the print, thus the print and the animation face one another. In this exhibition, Fire-pool (2017-2022) is installed between these two works.

The animation starts as a blank digital screen and thereafter BP (Bell Pottinger) logos disguised as bugs start to appear and move across the screen. Thereafter, some Dirham coins start to appear, as well as the angled South African 20 cents coin, and some text. Towards the end of the stop-frame animation, the outlines of the King Protea flower subtly begin to emerge.

The National Flower of South Africa began as a print of a digital drawing that was exhibited in Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition in 2017, but the drawing has since developed and has also changed into, and through, a GIF – a short animation that lives digitally online – which is potentially viral material. Such transformations perhaps fulfill a Protean prophecy contained or latent within the originally printed work, the image as viral, living, and open to ever more appropriations and transformations. The GIF can be viewed online at https://vimeo.com/786230406

The National Flower of South Africa (2017-2022) digital pigment print, 937 x 1500 mm

60 The National Flower of South Africa (2017-2022) screenshots of the GIF-based animation, looped

Fire-pool 2017-2022

Blue mosaic tiles, game arcade tokens, grout, paint, fiberglass, resin, lapa grass 3050 x 2040 mm

During State Capture, headlines in the news, and photographs of the infamous, lustrous state-funded ‘fire-pool’ at former President Jacob Zuma’s private residence at Nkandla, and estimated at R3.9 million, served as impetus for the artwork Fire-pool. The artwork resembles the bottom of a pool floor or wishing well, where wishes and dreams are formed through the dropping of coins. The wishing wells in this exhibition, however, are subversive as they speak to the gambling of state money as well as the draining of state resources, since the coins gathered on these floors do not have any monetary value. They are game arcade tokens that have different pictures and texts on opposite sides, such as “no cash value”, “non-refundable”, a picture of a joker and a riddling sphynx. Coins that have no cash value thus muddy the water for South Africans’ wishes and desires. I manipulated resin, grout, paint and exposed the resin to sunlight in order to resemble ruined pool areas. There are six sections of pool floors that are arranged in two rows, they rest on bundles of packed and layered thatching grass (Hyparrhenia hirta and Hyparrhenia filipendula) used for lapas. Lapas are popular indigenous structures and roofing options in South Africa which may pose a fire hazard. The pool, it was argued by Zuma, was a necessary firefighting

feature for the multiple grass roofs at his homestead. In the shocking report by former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, titled Secure in comfort: report on an investigation into allegations of impropriety and unethical conduct relating to the installation and implementation of security measures by the Department of Public Works at and in respect of the private residence of President Jacob Zuma at Nkandla in the Kwazulu-Natal province, she revealed the ‘fire-pool’ to, in fact, be a swimming pool and not a security upgrade as alleged. The swimming pool was one of the controversial upgrades, among others such as a visitor’s center, chicken run, a cattle kraal and an amphitheater. The total amount of the project was estimated at R246 million, of which R215 million had already been spent at the time of investigation (Madonsela 2014:5). In this artwork, the lapa grass is displaced from its usual structural function above a floor, to the floor, underneath the pool sections in a topsy-turvy situation translated as the ’verkeerde wêreld’.

Fire-pool was exhibited at Sasol New Signatures in 2017 and I have since appropriated and developed the work into a larger work suggestive of ruination and including thatch grass.

Facing page and following spread: installation shots from Fire-Pool (2017-2022)

Kamfers Dam flamingo

2019

Hot-pink flamingo pool float, artist’s breath, silicone, and pigment

240 x 1640 x 1200 mm

During the global flamingo décor fashion trend in 2019, photographs of dead flamingos at Kamfers Dam in the Northern Cape in South Africa went viral. The Kamfers Dam is the migration home to about 20 000 flamingos. The tragedy was a climate disaster exacerbated by municipal neglect and poor infrastructure which left many flamingos starved and immobile. The emotional pull of the dreadful photographs provoked an overwhelming emotional response from the public and enticed crowds of ordinary citizens to flock to the dam in attempts to take the saving of the birds upon themselves, to take photographs of these efforts and to share them on social media. The viral event not only expressed the public’s sympathies with the birds, but also opened up a space for the public to vent their frustrations with municipal corruption and the neglect of infrastructure which had contributed to the tragedy. However disastrously, the viral urge to partake in creating awareness through the posting of photographs inadvertently also caused harm. Researchers had planned their rehabilitation in an environmentally informed manner to prevent the arrest of the early development of small birds and to promote their future integration into flocks. Yet, against the advice and plea from conservationists not to intervene, some people persisted

and seemed unable to resist the pull (according to my personal correspondence with Mark and Tania Anderson and ‘Save the flamingo’ Facebook page). Although guards had been placed at the dam, some people climbed the fences to reach the birds.

Kamfers dam flamingo is a mixed-media sculptural installation of a trendy hot-pink flamingo pool float as found object. The pool float is nearly completely deflated and seems to lie, curiously lifeless in a small pool of silicone which resembles a stagnant liquid spillage. Yet, the positioning of one of its stark, pathetic-looking eyes makes it look directly at the viewer. Remnants of the artist’s own breath keeps parts of the float slightly inflated.

Installation shot from Kamfers Dam flamingo (2019)

Pastiche/ make-belief (Conclusion 1: the banal)

playing dead LOL

2020-2022

Performative and interactive fake stick-on plastic bricks, rolling and laughing cat toys, oil paint Dimensions variable

In playing dead LOL (laugh out loud)

banal mass-produced and fake brick stick-on that is intended to serve as wall cladding. The plush toys are all identical and are more or less the size of a small domestic cat, but are decorated with wild, gingertiger stripes. Their anatomy and facial features are over-generalised to the point of triteness. Upon touching the belly of the lush cat – a cat’s most vulnerable part – it starts to laugh uncannily and roll around, so frenziedly that they move outside of the frame of the floor-mounted ‘wall’. A dompteuse (tamer or animal trainer in French) instructs the cats to perform by way of pointing a stick at them. When they seem to resist instruction, the dompteuse proceeds to poke the cats. However, instead of the cats performing the tricks that the dompteuse seemed to have trained them to do, the trainer seems to be confronted with meme-like energy of clone cats, laughing uncontrollably, rolling in all directions, even subversively off the cladding. The viewer too can become a participant by touching the belly or sides of a plush cat. Whereas separately, the fake tiger marks and fake brick marks remain just that, their combination seems to spark the potential to create a ‘viral’ image.

The video may be viewed online at https://vimeo.com/786226009

Performance of playing dead LOL (2022-2022)

Following spreads: installation shots

A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle 2022

Performative interventions realized as a mixed media installation, including Diasec prints, beach sand, mussel shells, bottled seawater, soil from NIROX, found building bricks washed ashore and shaped by the water, found ochre and other pigments and rocks, made mussel pigment, sea bamboo, studio table, found archaeological label, sticks and metal erf number of a plot in Dana Bay, Western Cape, South Africa

This art project was made site-specifically for the NIROX Sculpture Park exhibition ‘Good Neighbours’ in 2022. A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle is an installation that is site-specific to the Cool Room at NIROX. It is also time-specific; it was opened on 7 May and closed on 31 August. The changing of the seasons and the sun’s tilt meant that the light filtering through the windows contributed to the transitory and temporal qualities of the artwork. A key component of the installation, the studio table, also drastically changed throughout this period as viewers participated by drawing and erasing with pigments on the table.

A game of cat’s cradle

Drawing on the metaphor of the string figure game of ‘cat’s cradle’, the installation ‘neighbours’ or transitions two physically distant points of origin: the Cradle of Humankind in Krügersdorp, Johannesburg and the Cradle of Human Culture in the Western Cape. It is significant that Johannesburg is the world’s largest city not located on a coast, lake or major river. The invitation to partake in this exhibition came at a time when I was conceptualizing a new artwork that explored

the interplay among screen, cave, and cradle. A ‘game of cat’s cradle’ entails a continuous engagement and interaction between two players who together create pictures by using string, such as a ‘cat’s cradle’, or ‘Jacob’s ladder’. The installation was on show for nearly four months and changed as viewers interacted with it and thereby became participants. The Cradle of Human Culture contains some of the most important caves, and what could be described as the oldest artists’ studios to date in the world, such as Cave 13B situated between Mossel Bay and Dana Bay, and the Blombos Caves situated close to Still Bay and Mossel Bay. Allegedly the oldest artwork, with abstract lines and hatching drawn with an ochre pencil on a silcrete flake, derives from Blombos Cave, dated to be approximately 73 000 years old (Henshilwood et al. 2005).

The caves around Mossel Bay holds personal significance for ‘neighbours’ and ‘relationships’. Cave 13B is situated only a few kilometers from my grandparents’ home in Dana Bay. Although I was born, raised and have lived in Bloemfontein in the center of South Africa, I migrated to Dana Bay for holidays every year of my life as a child. I became neighbours to people not of my own neighbourhood and I built relationships with this familial environment and its complex histories. By collecting objects, seawater, photographs and bodily images in my mind, I created a transition between my seminomadic home in Dana Bay and my home in Bloemfontein.

Detail from A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle (2022)

Performative photographic interventions

Brought together in the studio-like space at NIROX are performative photographic interventions created between NIROX and some of the most important caves in the Cradle of Human Culture via physically superimposing my laptop and cellphone screen in these diverse environments, as well as exchanging found objects from both these environments. The idea partially developed from another artwork on this exhibition, insight: into and outside the screen, and the possibilities it created. A migrating studio was created by joining the materiality of the laptop and laptop display screen with the layered, portable and interactive cellphone and cellphone screen. I was intrigued by the unexpected images created by the interactions between my body and these devices, as well as the engagements among these devices, myself, and the surrounding environments.

Player one (scouting at NIROX – cradles, shadows, and reflections)

Some of the photos on the left: Lyrene Kühn

I was inspired by the connections between these screens and the caves. While I moved around with my screens, on and off (displaying reflections on photographs and empty screens with reflections and fingermarks for example), I also collected small, portable objects from the surrounding area such as ochre, limestone, mussel shells and bottled seawater close to various caves. Sea sand and other objects which had been washed ashore, such as sea bamboo and pieces of what were once dwellings, such as red bricks, were also collected. Some areas of the caves/artists’ studios contained in the Cradle of Human Culture reveal middens of materials and pigments that were used for drawing and painting, such as ochre, charcoal, and limestone. I also collected various sized mussel shells, crucial in the diet of modern humankind in these areas. I arranged the mussel shells on the floor resembling a rudimentary collection and a simple shoreline. I also crushed some of the mussel shells to create varied hues of purple pigment. Since the mussel shells, sea salt, beach sand and sea bamboo intimated the sea, smell became a subtle, but important element of the installation.

This page and following spreads: Player two (hiking the St. Blaize trail and caves in the Western Cape), then player one again, moves, then player two, more moves and so forth…

Performative

photographic interventions materialized as Diasec prints that resemble floating screens

The photographs taken of my laptop and iPad screen with my phone, is printed in the three different sizes of these devices onto Diasec-mounted photographic paper. The Diasec-mounting is intended to resemble floating screens, and to draw attention not only to the immaterial but importantly also to the materiality of the screen (as an interface and layering of crystal liquid glass, and with fingerprints and other traces from the environment) that can simultaneously display images and reflect the environment onto those images. I am reminded of the physical rock surface of cave paintings that functioned moreover as a screen or veil.

The Diasec screens hang against the walls (except for two that hang back-to-back above the table) in between large windows which also function as screens by letting in natural sunlight and by ‘framing’ views of the gardens and trees of the NIROX park.

Detail from A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle (2022)

Diasec print, 240 x 185 mm

Details from A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle (2022): diasec prints, 200 x 300 mm

The screen as transitional object

I developed the interaction between the outside and inside further by ‘transferring’ the filtered sunlight coming through the windows onto the floor by means of copying/imitating the light on the floor with a variety of coloured beach sand, which I created by mixing beach sand with sea salt and some pigment. By transferring the window/screen onto the floor I intended to blur the boundary between wall/floor. As the sunlight moved throughout the day, it also moved over a studio table that was in the exhibition space. I subsequently transferred the light and shadow cast through the window onto this table, but not with subtle beach sand hues. Rather I used some beach sand and limestone in combination with intense ochre, hematite and charcoal pigment. I left the shadow of the grid of the window as a negative space (the white of the table). The transferred grid on the table resembled the drawing of the silcrete flake found in the Blombos Cave as well as a type of archeological site. Within this type of grid table/drawing/excavation site, I placed pieces of ochre rock, as well as containers of mussel shell pigment. I left a few sticks which I had picked up at NIROX,

on the table. The table became an important component in my installation, since viewers naturally took part in the development of the table as an artwork – viewers left fingerprints, made pictures in the pigment, picked up objects and made impressions of objects by using them as stamps that left traces. Viewers were invited to engage with the work through taking photographs and sharing them online or sending them to me personally. However, I was surprised by the layering effect and intensity of interaction between the viewers and the studio table, although I had not specifically articulated an invite to do this. For me the table thus became a layering of multiple ‘cat’s cradles’ where viewers became participants in an open-ended

game and they responded to previous participants’ mark-making –by either expanding on it by deepening the lines of a drawing, by otherwise changing it, or by erasing it and leaving new traces. The table therefore became a space for the viral multiplication of pictures and images.

Since images and image objects reveal, shape, aid or impair interactions and relationships, I reflected upon interactions among various neighbours, contexts, people, places, images, memories, and histories, and about the ways in which these various contexts, relationships, and meanings may shift.

Following spread: installation shots from A game of cat’s cradle: screen/cave/cradle (2022)

Bibliography

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Belting, H. 2005. An anthropology of images: picture, medium, body. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Du Plessis, C. 31 May 2015. ‘Not a single fire extinguisher at Nkandla’ in City Press. Available at https://www.news24.com/ citypress/News/No-regard-for-fire-safety-at-Nkandla-20150531 [Accessed June 2015].

Henshilwood, C.S, d’Errido, F, van Niekerk, K.L, Dayet, L, Queffelec, A & L. Pollaro. 2018, ‘An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa’, Nature, vol. 562, pp.115-118. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ s41586-018-0514-3#Abs [Accessed 15 January 2022]

Madonsela, T. 2014. Secure in comfort: report on an investigation into allegations of impropriety and unethical conduct relating to the installation and implementation of security measures by the Department of Public Works at and in respect of the private residence of President Jacob Zuma at Nkandla in the Kwazulu-Natal province. City unknown: Office of the Public ProtectZr. Available at: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/ public-protectors-report-nkandlaa.pdf [Accessed 23 March 2014]

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Personal correspondence via WhatsApp between myself and Mark Anderson in February 2019

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About the artist

Johandi du Plessis is an emerging conceptual artist and researcher based in Bloemfontein in the Free State, South Africa. She teaches at the Fine Arts Department at the University of the Free State in various mediums, often presenting drawing, digital painting, conceptual and installation art projects. She received her Bachelors’degree in Fine Art in 2014 at the same institution. Du Plessis has participated in over forty local and international exhibitions, including the prestigious art competitions Sasol New Signatures and the Absa l’Atelier, and most recently in the ‘Good Neighbours’ exhibition at NIROX Sculpture Park. In 2016 she was selected as one of fourteen of South Africa’s most promising emerging artists to partake in the experimental and interdisciplinary OPENLab Arts Residency, held at Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA) in Richmond in the Northern Cape. She is recipient of a grant from the Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust. Her work is presented in the online database ‘Jack Gingsberg Centre for Book Arts’ and held in the DAC and MAPSA collections. She is a member of the Free State Art Collective.

Contact: artist@johandiduplessis.co.za

Annie, the cat, seems curious about seeing herself on my cellphone screen as I take a selfie. I was reading Virtual Menageries: animals as mediators in network cultures by Jody Berland (2019).

Selected exhibitions

2022 Good Neighbours

NIROX Sculpture Park, Cradle of Humankind, Krügersdorp, South Africa

2021-2022 Interface

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery (2022), exhibition website (2021), Free State Arts Festival, University of the Free State, South Africa

2022 A Wound in Time

Fine Arts Department alumni, Fine Arts Department, Mabaleng Building, University of the Free State

2021-2022 Are you game?

Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa

2021 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

2021 Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition

Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Free State Arts Festival. Bloemfontein, South Africa

2020 Myopia

William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, South Africa

2020 Lockdown: a viral experiment Social media platforms and the Free State Art Collective website

2019 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

2019 Betwixt and Between

Scaena Gallery, Free State Arts Festival, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

2018 Speaking out and standing up: an exhibition in honour of courageous South African woman

Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa

2018 Flux

Scaena Gallery, Free State Arts Festival, University of the Free State, South Africa

2018 Phatshoane Henney New Breed Art Competition

Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa

2017 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

2017 Bookness: Contemporary South African artist’s books

Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture Gallery (FADA), University of Johannesburg, South Africa

2017 SA Taxi Foundation Art Award Top 30

Lizamore and Associates Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2017 Saadjies: Cool Capital Guerilla Bienalle South Africa

Cape Town, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, Richmond, Stellenbosch, International: Brussels, Amsterdam, Utrecht, London

2016 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100 Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

2016 District Six Fiftieth Commemoration Print Exchange, District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2015 Absa l’Atelier Top 100 Absa Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

2014 Absa l’Atelier Top 100

Absa Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2013 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa

Residency

Selected as one of fourteen of South Africa’s most promising emerging and mid-career artists to partake in the experimental and interdisciplinary residency, OPENLab Arts Residency 2016: The art of being social, Programme for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD), Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA), Richmond, South Africa. The residency was developed by artists and curators Paul Gazzalo and Carl Leimbach from Australia. The facilitators were artists Abrie Fourie (Berlin/South Africa), Ella Ziegler (Berlin), Khanyisile Mbongwa (South Africa) and Lesiba Mabitsela (South Africa).

View the catalogue at: http://map-southafrica.org/projects/2018/open_lab_2016/

Areas of interest installation art cats GIF memes image theory nostalgia iconoclash social imaginaries screens dead cat strategies picaresque strategies

Acknowledgements

MA Fine Arts (Supervisors)

Prof Janine Allen, Department of Fine Ars, UFS

Prof Suzanne Human, Department of Art History and Image Studies, UFS

Prof Willem Boshoff, Department of Fine Arts, UFS

Family and friends

Special acknowledgement to my husband, Christiaan Kleynhans, for his continued motivation, support, and interest and Adriélle Kolle for assisting with social media

The Department of Fine Arts, UFS Adelheid von Maltitz (AHD); Janine Allen; Ben Botma; Waldo Human; Lyrene Kühn-Botma; Petrus Morata; Jaco Spies; Bontle Tau; Dot Vermeulen; student and technical assistants, students and alumni

Exhibition: VIRAL IMAGES at Oliewenhuis Art Museum

OLIEWENHUIS ART MUSEUM

Ester le Roux (curator), Yolanda de Kock, Karen Marais, Sepadi Moruthane, Tladi Motholo, Thamsanqa Malgas, Siobhan Swart, Xola Sello, Jacobeth Selinga, staff members and interns

Opening speaker: Dr Martin Rossouw

Performers in playing dead LOL (2020-2022)

Liz Vorster and Lilian Brink

Exhibition: Good Neighbours at NIROX Sculpture Park NIROX SCULPTURE PARK

The Department of Art History and Image Studies, UFS

Dr Martin Rossouw (AHD); Amanda de Goueveia, Johanet Kriel; Prof Dirk van den Berg

Benji Liebmann, Sven Christian (curator), Yusuf Essop, the members of the Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust; staff Lyrene Kühn-Botma (internal curator), Adriélle Kolle, Christiaan Kleynhans, Sibenxolo Foji and Rebecca Webster viewer-participants

Financial support

The University of the Free State

The Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust

The National Arts Council

Framing of artworks

Esré Frames Catalogue

Editing: Manuela Lovisa

Layout and design: Peter Machen

Photography: Johandi du Plessis, Rian Hörn, Adriélle Kolle, Oliewenhuis Art Museum

Videography: Zita Olinger

Annexure: an offsite installation

Openings and traps 2016

Mixed-media installation: altered found object and a series of five Google Street View interventions Dimensions variable

The installation comprises of an altered found object and a series of five Google Street View interventions printed as photographs that resemble screens. This is the first artwork through which I started to explore the relations and clashes between online/offline places and the materiality of what is labelled ‘digital’ or ‘virtual’ –like digital screens and other technologies. I was curious, but also hesitant, about the bodily experience of viewing the Google Street View-mediated public spaces. The photographs are screenshots of my laptop screen while I ‘walked’ the streets via Goggle Street View online. I was surprised by the images created by mistake when my slow and inconsistent internet connection caused the seemingly seamless street views to give way to gaps between the ‘stitched’ images and by strange, fragmentary overlapped shadows and figures. These screen images, like artworks, seemed as if they could be an opening and/or a trap - especially with reference to the interplay between revealing and concealing which is significant when surveillance technologies are used.

At the time of creating the artwork I felt disconnected from parts of the city. Driving in these areas were not the same as walking through them. However, the spaces I wanted to walk through were typically not pedestrian-friendly. But the Google Street View

experience felt distant in a sense. In attempting to engage more to close a lived gap, I deliberately played around with my internet connection, which resulted in these screenshot images. A city seems corporeal as if it could breathe and could have many openings, like eyes or ears, that could aid to lead one to underground systems. A city under construction leaves many more piercings, and stolen manhole covers pose a risk as bodies can fall through them. Many of the spaces that I explored via Google Street View were restricted due to ruination, construction and/or neglect.

The photographs/screens are installed lower than eye-level, close to the found object, which is a 100kg re-enforced concrete slab cast around a manhole. It has been reworked by way of chipping away some of the concrete to reveal the layers inside. The angular opening echoes the rectangular shape of the screens.

The installation was exhibited at Sasol New Signatures in 2016 and has since been permanently installed at Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA) in Richmond in the Northern Cape. The found object has been installed in the courtyard and has slowly started changing due to the elements and some small plants are growing out of the slab. Every day, the earth around the found object is raked, in circular rippling lines that seem to emanate from the object. These circular lines echo the circular MAPSA logo that is used as the basis for the outside seating area. The series of photographs are installed in a room close to the courtyard.

Following spreads: details of Openings and traps

page 106-107: printed series of five Google Street View interventions page 108: installation shot of installation in Pretoria Art Museum page 109: detail of artwork installed at MAPSA (Modern Art Projects South Africa) (Photo: Jaco Spies)

Oliewenhuis Art Museum is a satellite of the National Museum, Bloemfontein, an agency of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.