MICHAEL STEVENSON Hill House De Smidt Street Green Point 8005 PO Box 616 Green Point 8051 Cape Town tel +27 (0)21 421 2575 fax +27 (0)21 421 2578 info@michaelstevenson.com www.michaelstevenson.com
Cover Zineb Sedira, Transitional Landscape, 2006, panoramic C-print, 154 x 50cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris
Curated by Sophie perryer 22 MarCh – 28 april 2007
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noitCudort 6 IntroductIon ahtob Mi 8 WIm Botha arierreF alegn 12 ร ngela FerreIra agnal aWkehSo 16 moshekWa langa obMatnM ahpidna 22 nandIpha mntamBo agnuzduM noSMa 26 samson mudzunga SreduerhCS ettedual 30 claudette schreuders 34 zIneB sedIra arideS beni 40 penny sIopIsSipoiS ynne irรกV ettenni 46 mInnette VรกrI 50 James WeBB bbeW SeMa 54 BIographIes Seihpargoi
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noitCudortni IntroductIon ‘When you’re standing at the crossroads that you cannot comprehend Just remember that death is not the end’ nick Cave and the bad Seeds, Death is Not the End, 1996 (words and music by bob dylan, 1988) death is the ultimate crossroads, the meeting place of ‘before’ and ‘after’, ‘here’ and ‘there’. It signifies the end of the world as we know it, the limits of what we comprehend. Afterlife explores the nebulous zones where the material and spiritual realms intersect, and where the past and future converge, revealing themselves in the present. the works approach the subject from different angles, tangentially at times, and in singularly diverse ways. they do so in media that include painting, video, photography, sculpture, printmaking, sound and installation. transformation is a theme that recurs in different guises. It takes place before our eyes in Ângela Ferreira’s video A Woman like Polley, in which the artist inhabits the persona of the founder of the cape town Film Festival, whom she credits with profoundly influencing her cultural consciousness through films. In her tribute, Ferreira turns herself into the older man by showing, in stages, the lengthening and whitening of her hair, a physical transformation that mirrors both that of her own consciousness and the course of polley’s life. communication with the spirits, rebirth and past lives are all present in the works on exhibition. samson mudzunga performs his own burial and rebirth in a symbolic act of regeneration and self-transformation. James Webb’s Autohagiography invokes the voices of his past selves, retrieved from his subconscious mind during hypnotherapy. In Vigil, minnette Vári conjures up a host of characters, real and imagined, from across the historical and geographical breath of southern africa, and envisions them consorting together as time converges. the seductive ape-women who appear in Vigil resemble the ‘wild people’ whose stories penny siopis draws on in her series, Feral Fables. existing on the margins of civilisation, these characters evoke a state of liminality, and in her paintings siopis finds material form for this slippage between the physical and the ethereal. In moshekwa langa’s portrait paintings awareness of mortality hovers ever-present at the edges of our consciousness. transition comes to the fore in zineb sedira’s poetic video projection, Saphir. set in the port of algiers, the film is a meditation on arrivals and departures, movement and stasis, past and present, home and away. Its two protagonists traverse, respectively, the city and an old colonial-style hotel, stopping to gaze out at the sea which separates and connects algeria to France; despite their restlessness they appear trapped in limbo.
like sedira, nandipha mntambo finds traces of the colonial past in the present. her extraordinary Iqaba lami is a representation of a herero dress made from hide including cows’ faces. Its simultaneously beautiful and tragic form evokes the genocide of the herero people at the same time as it embodies their creative powers of regeneration. claudette schreuders’ Public Figure references the practice of memorialising people through public sculpture. the figure of a woman becomes a perch for birds, suggesting she is doubly removed from herself – the sculpture of a statue – and hinting at the divide between public and private personas. Wim Botha’s Rorschach (After Velázquez) translates the 1 th-century spanish painting into a mirrored linoprint depicting mars, god of War, subjected to the forces of destruction. Both schreuders’ work, which borrows its pose from a greek kouros statue, and Botha’s, exemplify the power of artworks to outlive their creators, giving rise to new interpretations by subsequent generations. they, like the other works on exhibition, make us aware that the afterlife is to be found all around us.
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WIm Botha
ahtob MiW
your linoprint is based on Velázquez’s 1 0 painting Mars, God of War. What processes have you subjected the original image to? there are three interventions at play: firstly, the image is duplicated; one is mirrored, with the two slightly different versions facing each other, or set in opposition. the second of course is that it is executed as a relief print instead of the original painting. the primary visual translation is that the figures are presented as “permanent remains”, skeletons that continue to be subjected to an unspecified destructive force. you have previously made a lifesize mirrored copy of michelangelo’s Pietà out of maize meal, and are in the process of making a Laocoön group, a hellenistic sculpture that informed the work of michelangelo. Velázquez in turn studied Italian art, and his works have inspired others before you. every form of contemporary visual art has the entire history of the development of the visual language behind it. Many artists find it irresistible occasionally to dance along that timeline, since the official history is a one-sided construct, and the images often belie that narrative. in addition, humanity has not fundamentally changed and we share many sentiments and thoughts with others from previous ages. i am drawn to interfere with images that have a profound impact on me mentally or emotionally. Mars is such an image. does the skeletonisation of your image imply an end point in this continuum of influence and (re)interpretation? it casts it in a different light, and a decidedly more ambiguous and contradictory one, but the fact that the figure or its skeleton has remained motionless amid such force could on the contrary suggest a permanence. Velázquez’s menacing portrait has entered the visual canon and will continue to exert influence forever. its offspring, this lino diptych, rather spawns an underbelly or counterargument, or a subliminal alter ego to the original Mars who lives on unchanged, but perhaps slightly encumbered. the mirrored image creates the simultaneous effects of a vortex and a violent explosion (as in your linoprint series Blastwave). It would appear that the tables have turned and mars, the perpetrator, has fallen victim to his own powers of destruction. in depicting the god of War this diptych could be interpreted as the source of the destructive force in the other linoprints. it sets up a point of friction between similar but opposing principles. it is from this interstice that the destructive force emanates symmetrically, however the actual origin remains unseen, possibly suggesting an external or more fundamental origin. despite the apparent destruction there is a suggestion of permanence, an immortality through metamorphosis or sublimation.
Rorschach (After Velázquez) 2007 linoprint on tea-stained hahnemühle paper diptych, 179 x 95cm each
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arierreF alegn Ângela FerreIra ‘For me this work involved a lot of going backwards and forwards in time. i only understood the relevance and impact of all that movie-watching and discussing long after the actual event, so it was important for me to portray time in my homage. people like polley have an immediate impact but also very long-lasting effects. both timelines are relevant. this mirrors the process of the construction of consciousness or indeed of a cultural identity. people often ask whether contemporary art is of any value, and of course the answer is yes, because it slowly builds a sense of a people’s heritage and hence affirms their existence.’ Ângela Ferreira’s Cape Town Film Festival has two components – the video A Woman like Polley, and a number of cabinets designed to display photocopies of programmes of the eponymous festival. the work pays homage to the late James aubrey polley and acknowledges the seminal influence of the cape town International Film Festival, which polley founded and directed for 1 years (until his death in 1 ). the festival emerged at the height of apartheid south africa’s isolation from the rest of the world, spanning the violent struggles of the 1 0s and the country’s subsequent transformation into fledgling democracy. during this time, it provided intellectual stimulation to numerous capetonians – among them Ferreira, then a student at the michaelis school of Fine art, university of cape town, and lecturer at the cape technikon. In the video, Ferreira enacts polley’s transformation from Baptist priest (and flag-flying member of the then banned anc) to purveyor of alternative culture. like polley, she dons and then discards the white collar, closing her eyes momentarily in an attitude of prayer. the camera spins around, time accelerates and Ferreira ages before our eyes, her hair lengthening and whitening until she is recognisably the man bending down in a field of grass, captured for posterity in a photograph. Ferreira inhabits polley’s persona, the ‘prominent visual personality’, as she describes him, with his flowing hair and hippie attire; at the same time she is possessed by his spirit, her consciousness transformed through his belief in film’s potential to foster the type of discourse that gives rise to social, political and personal change. In Ferreira’s cabinets, the photocopied facsimiles of programmes are testimonials to the array of films screened at the annual festival, most of them unlikely to have been shown in the country’s mainstream movie houses due to reasons ranging from lack of popular appeal to subversive content. as trevor steele-taylor noted in his obituary for polley in the Mail & Guardian ( 1/01/1 ), the festival did a great deal to establish an audience for ‘cinema as art’ in south africa. shown in cape town for the first time on this exhibition, Ferreira’s work confirms the enduring influence of polley on her own increasingly widely regarded oeuvre, as well as the power of film in exposing viewers to worlds apart from their own.
Cape Town Film Festival: A Woman like Polley 2003 Single channel digital video duration 4 mins 25 secs, colour, no sound
Courtesy of the artist and galeria Filomena Soares, lisbon the artist thanks trevor Steele-taylor and katrina polley
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Cape Town Film Festival: Cabinets 2003 Superwood, paint, a4 photocopies on colour paper Cabinets: 55 x 232 x 30cm; 154 x 63 x 22cm
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agnal aWkehSoM moshekWa langa ‘i was inspired by figures of people carrying firewood. i also made drawings of people with their mouths wide open, which were then stuffed with these sticks, so it looked as if some had long cigars or would not be able to utter anything ... i also used the motif of a kind of a halo. i was actually veering between the two. Sometimes the stick translated into a sack. So in a way i was addressing the things that people carry with them along their paths. however this was not made explicit in the drawings and paintings … you can see them as a façade, or as front windows none too clean.’ moshekwa langa’s figurative paintings are frequently macabre at the same time as they are humorous, soulful and compassionate. In these portraits the intangible is made manifest, air becomes thick and solid, the atmosphere can be literally be felt. langa is concerned with his subjects’ inner psychological states as well as their outlook. In two works from 00 , figures with death’s heads are named Golddigger and Socialite. hidden or unspoken qualities are shown as nakedly apparent. the paintings on Afterlife share a fateful sense that the living are haunted by their own mortality. the figure in The Last Sigh seems surprised by the force of her own exhalation, her breath spewing out as if finally escaping the physical body. the space around her vibrates with psychic disturbance. atop the figure, and recurring in a number of works, is an oval shape like a halo that, instead of radiating light, seems to capture something of the mental state of the subject. In Gods of Small Things the figure is weighed down by a black thundercloud; the effect is oppressive and depressing. Goldie’s aspect is by contrast lighter, uplifting. In Mamgobozi, a ghostly, ectoplasmic presence hovers around the edges of the ‘scurrilous busybody’ of the title, who wears an expression of mild amazement. langa describes the paintings as ‘a kind of portrait of the same individual in different states, in different areas’ (danielle tilkin, There & Back. Africa, madrid, 00 ). the thoughts and emotions of the haloes, which are also reminiscent of speech bubbles, have been displaced, cut off from their origins. In this perhaps can be seen something of langa’s concern with displacement of a more physical kind, as experienced by the immigrant to another country who carries his sense of home with him in the form of memories of a previous life.
Mamgobozi 2006 Mixed media on paper 156.5 x 116cm
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The Last Sigh 2005 indian ink, oil, acrylic and pencil on paper 88.5 x 68.5cm
Angelic 2005 acrylic, oil and pencil on paper 82 x 62cm
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Goldie 2005 acrylic and Conte wax crayon on paper 64.5 x 50cm
Gods of Small Things 2005 Mixed media on paper 64.5 x 50cm
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obMatnM ahpidnan nandIpha mntamBo ‘through experimenting with the process of casting cowhide into a shape, allowing it to dry, then re-wetting it, i have discovered that the hide “remembers” the shape it was previously moulded onto and retains elements of this even in its new shape. this “material memory” that seems to exist within the skin cells of the animals i use means that the medium itself is one that physically engages the idea of recollection.’ nandipha mntambo has chosen to make her most characteristic works from cowhide, a material that is redolent of past lives, and specifically the lives of animals – governed by humans, and subjected to the inhumanity with which we treat other life forms. the material is impregnated with pathos at the same time as it is delicate and beautiful. this is particularly true for the hide from cows’ faces, which bears the whiskers and eyelashes that are associated with the senses and thus the way living creatures experience the world. In Iqaba lami (loosely translated as ‘my traditionalist’), mntambo also makes reference to a case of inhumanity to other humans – the genocide perpetrated against the herero people by german colonists in south West africa in the early 1 00s. From the hide mntambo has made a herero dress, modelled on the bulky Victorian costume worn by the colonial german women and featuring a bustle. the dress was ridiculously impractical for the climate and exigencies of the time, but was adopted by the herero with such enthusiasm that the style – first constructed with multiple underskirts of animal hide and more recently translated into patterned fabrics – is still worn with pride today. For the bustle, mntambo uses hide from cows’ faces, complete with the holes where eyes looked out, and mouths and noses used to be. Forming a train, the faces look backwards, like witnesses to the past. With its fur reminiscent of feathers, the dress conjures up Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, looking backwards at the ‘catastrophe’ of the past while forcibly impelled, by the storm of progress, into the future.
Iqaba lami 2007 Cowhide (including faces), resin, fibreglass mesh, waxed cord 150 x 115 x 75cm
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agnuzduM noSMaS samson mudzunga ‘this is the biggest drum ever made!’ samson mudzunga’s drums are inextricably linked to his sense of personal vitality, and his latest, gigantic drum clearly demonstrates him to be at the height of his powers. like the majority of his drums, it is intended as a coffin, not for an actual burial but rather for mudzunga’s enactment of his own death and subsequent rebirth. this is an act of selftransformation that mudzunga says gives him increased power and energy. In mudzunga’s core performance, he climbs inside a drum through a hinged door and emerges some minutes later in different clothing. he is generally accompanied by his wife dorcas, who beats on the drum – a medium for communication with the ancestors – to ‘wake him from the dead’. this is embellished in different ways as inspired by the context. For example, an exhibition at the contemporary museum in honolulu prompted an elaborate ‘hawaii honeymoon’ performance in which mudzunga’s rebirth was followed by samson and dorcas parading through the grounds in wedding finery before climbing into a taxi – constructed using four chairs, with a museum attendant enlisted as chauffeur – and waving farewell. For Afterlife, mudzunga promises to enter his drum through a curtained door and proceed to lie in state for a lengthy period, allowing gallery-goers to file past and witness his death. a blue lightbulb installed inside the drum will lend him a deathly pallor. after a while, mudzunga will be woken by dorcas loudly beating the drum. exiting through another, hinged door, mudzunga will emerge in traditional Venda clothing. the new mudzunga will be blessed by dorcas using water brought from lake Fundudzi. their relationship is affirmed by the presence inside the door of a photograph from the honolulu museum. mudzunga’s connection to lake Fundudzi – which he says is responsible for the dreams that guide his actions – lies at the heart of a rift between him and the hierarchies in Venda society that traditionally govern access to the lake. It is mudzunga’s particular provocation to acknowledge the ill feeling that is harboured against him by naming the latest vehicle of his empowerment Vivho Venda – ‘jealousy in Venda’.
Vivho Venda 2007 Wood, hide, fabric, paint, tape, bolt, padlock and chain, electric cable, lightbulb, photograph 160 x 325 x 130cm
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Claudette SreduerhCSChreuderS S ettedualC Claudette Schreuders’ carved and painted figures are quiet and understated yet powerful presences. they frequently embody archetypal roles that are played out in our relationships with others on an everyday basis. they are richly metaphoric, yet recognisably individual. In Schreuders’ most recent group of sculptures, titled The Fall, the characters find their origins or prototypes in the Biblical story of adam and eve’s expulsion from the Garden of eden, but enact the dynamics of relationships as we all experience them. among these figures is Paradise, a woman on whose outstretched arm is perched a kingfisher, symbolic of the unfettered spirit. Birds appear again in Schreuders’ Public Figure, but this time the black starlings perched on the head, shoulder and foot suggest that this is not sculpture of a woman but a representation of a statue. the work borrows its pose from a Greek kouros statue (dating from between 600 and 500 BC) which Schreuders saw recently in the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York. like kouroi (and their female counterparts, korai) Public Figure is depicted full frontal, arms hanging by her sides, with one leg positioned slightly in front of the other, standing on a plinth. Schreuders’ work in general draws on a range of artistic traditions, West african colon figures, Central african nkisi fetishes, South american devotional sculptures and medieval religious etchings among them. her sources tend to share a spiritual dimension, and it is inevitably the interior life of a particular figure that Schreuders is concerned to show. Public Figure incorporates the kouros – with its functions of devotional offering and grave marker – into her lexicon while also referring to the subsequent Western artistic tradition of public figurative sculpture as a commemorative form (a tradition to which she has contributed with her sculptures of South african Nobel Peace Prize recipients at Cape town’s V&a Waterfront). at the same time as Schreuders acknowledges art history as a rich repository of source material available for reuse and reinterpretation, Public Figure also operates on a more intimate level, as a comment on the disjuncture that exists between our private selves, our inner lives, and the more constrained selves that we present in public.
Public Figure 2007 Jacaranda, jelutong, enamel paint 102 x 30 x 22cm
Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
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arideS beniz zIneB sedIra ‘i was fascinated by the art deco es Safir hotel – once the hotel aletti, and algiers’ casino … at first glance the building looks “authentic” or in original condition, but as you get closer you see that it hasn’t been looked after and it’s rundown. Some people are put off by its neglected state, but i love its strangely unexpected appearance. i find that in algiers you’re faced with this aesthetic experience all the time – an initial impression of splendour or perfection shattered by flaws.’ Zineb Sedira in conversation with Christine Van Assche, Saphir (The Photographers’ Gallery, London, Kamel Mennour and Paris Musées, France, 2006) zineb sedira’s two-screen video projection, Saphir, was filmed in and around the port of algiers and is presided over by the large expanse of sea that stretches towards the horizon. It is this body of water that separates and connects algeria and France, countries tied to each other in the present by the legacy of the colonial past, and which together inform sedira’s heritage as the paris-born daughter of algerian immigrants. the port is a place of arrivals and departures, and sedira’s film and related photographs offer a lyrical meditation on transition, from place to place, past to present, one state of mind or being to another. the video opens to the cries of the migratory swallows that appear in a constant whirl, criss-crossing the blue sky and the white façade of the es safir hotel. a symbol of faded colonial grandeur, the hotel forms a backdrop for the movements of sedira’s two actors/protagonists. Inside the building, a woman – the daughter of pieds-noirs, europeans who left algeria when the country gained its independence – gazes out to sea from her balcony or window in between traversing the corridors, ascending and descending the stairs. outside, an algerian man is likewise either on the move or looking at the sea, watching the arrival of the tariq Ibn ziyad ferry, the conduit between algiers and marseilles for migrant workers and those in search of better lives. restlessness and longing suffuse sedira’s piece, yet the mood is ambivalent – for all their motion the film’s protagonists seem to be suspended in limbo; physically present, their minds elsewhere. In the end sedira counters this with a continuous shot from the hotel across a railway line to the harbour and back to the city, as if casting an anchor to the here and now. the jewel of the title, French for sapphire, evokes the colour of the mediterranean and the glittering promise of faraway cities, but also the preciousness of home. In this sense sedira is the ambassador – safir in arabic – who reminds us that it is our identification with a particular place that allows us to feel that we belong.
Saphir 2006 two-channel video installation duration 18 mins, sound
Courtesy of the artist and galerie kamel Mennour, paris Co-commissioned by the photographers’ gallery and Film and Video umbrella, london
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Haunted House 2006 C-print 80 x 100cm
Transitional Landscape 2006 Diptych, panoramic C-prints 50 x 154cm each
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SipoiS ynnep penny sIopIs In Feral Fables you make reference to stories about ‘marginal people’. Who are these people, and what attracted you to them? the stories i draw on feature “wild people” – people whose identities somehow challenge our humanity. i’m interested in how such characters tell us something about ourselves. We need their wildness to confirm our domestication. We fear them because they embody a state of being into which we might “fall” under extreme circumstances – we might “lose our heads”, our language, decorum, civilisation. but we desire them because they also represent a kind of “basic instinct” and freedom in their wildness. there are two types of stories. the first is of feral children – children raised by wild animals or living in extreme isolation in cities – which i explore through the prism of the recent case of the Cambodian girl who emerged from the jungle, having disappeared in 1989. the second encapsulates characters such as Julia pastrana, the extremely hairy woman with an overdeveloped ape-like jaw who was exhibited all over the world in the 1850s. both stories mix categories we feel compelled to keep distinct – human/animal, man/woman, child/adult … they evoke a state of liminality. they also open up associations with other images of extreme situations – including contemporary media accounts of trauma – where consciousness appears to detach from the body. the stories are triggers for me to explore what it means to be human in wider terms. i don’t intend my explorations to be interrogations of the narratives themselves; rather, i want to use the stories to picture the feelings they evoke. Many have an ‘imaginary’ look – like images we might remember from childhood. In materialising the images you have combined transparent washes of colour with a more tangible substance, glue. are you setting up a tension between the physical and the ephemeral? For me the ephemeral can only be accessed through the physical. i want the works to look bodily. in this i try to allow for as much congealing as possible of the viscous glue and the liquid ink stain. i’d like the works to look like emotion made flesh, if that is possible. the glue forms a “skin” over the image, making it look veiled. For me, this effect evokes a caul – the membrane some babies have over their faces when they are born – and reminds me of my grandmother telling me about her sister, who was born with a caul and could thus “see things”. i try in most works to show the glue-skin as both shaping the image-icon and in the process of detaching from it. i want the image to seem on the verge of collapse because the stuff it’s made of is on edge, about to lose control, slip off the page. i’d like materiality and representation to be at odds here. the process of working is a mix of directedness and chance. there is a tension between form and formlessness suggesting an image in the process of becoming. this – and the idea of chance in working the medium – reflects the concept of some liminal state of human consciousness as much as the iconography does.
Feral Fables: Changeling 76.5 x 56 cm Series 2007, mixed media on paper
Courtesy of the artist and goodman gallery, Johannesburg
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This page, clockwise from top left Feral Fables: Prey 18.2 x 27.5 cm Feral Fables: Mother and Child Embalmed 12.5 x 17cm Feral Fables: Caul 12.5 x 17cm Feral Fables: Snare 17 x 12.5 cm
This page, clockwise from top right Feral Fables: Pining Jungle Girl 17 x 12.5cm Feral Fables: Suckling 12.5 x 17cm Feral Fables: Pet 12.5 x 17cm Feral Fables: In the Deep 41.5 x 59cm
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This page, left to right Feral Fables: Fetter 20.8 x 29 cm Feral Fables: Out of the Wilderness 75.5 x 26.5cm
This page, left to right Feral Fables: Trance 56.5 x 75cm Feral Fables: Throb 56.5 x 75cm
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iráV ettenniM mInnette VárI ‘i am fascinated by the intersections and interpolations of historic events and the myths that inform them or sprout around them, the interstices in the narratives of the world where fact and fiction inform one another, our imaginations leap from stone to stone with time dutifully misting it all over. the idea that there was once a “before”, and a “before” before that, and one before that. how “origin” slips just out of our reach all the time, rendering us all strange/estranged. and looking back, trying to create some sort of chronology by lining up what we know or think we know about that which came before, every mythology offering its own order and logic of how the universe fits together and how things fall apart: picture each as a disk, and these disks as lenses in a telescope, turning, aligning, refocusing, distorting, exploring.’ minnette Vári’s video projection, Vigil, begins with the stirring of a subterranean presence, which proceeds to make its way upwards through the earth’s rich strata to the surface. Its purpose seems to be to witness the unfolding of a great span of southern african history. the gateway it opens functions as Vári’s constantly turning lens, and is framed with a mapmaker’s cartouche that features, among its embellishments, surveillance cameras which maintain their own watchful vigil. through this portal we glimpse a circling landscape of telegraph poles, pylons, a Ferris wheel, billboards alongside a highway … footage shot by Vári driving out of and back into the eastern side of Johannesburg, past malls and mine dumps. this twilight scene is overlaid with another: a gathering ‘in a tree-framed knoll’, Vári says, ‘of all the people who in more or less significant ways shaped this region as we know it, be it by edict or by foot’. these are characters real and imaginary, drawn from history and legend, including explorers, chiefs, queens, assassins, visionaries … We are invited to imagine their interactions as they change places and move in and out of our field of vision. We are tempted also to try and identify the subterranean ‘presence’ as one of the protagonists: the flame-haired ape-woman bearing a lantern, perhaps, or her skittishly seductive consorts. the pace and pitch of this exchange become increasingly frenetic until time collapses in on itself, and we are sucked into a vortex. In this black hole are dotted lights like stars that suggest an expanse of time and space compared to which the breadth of human history passes in an instant.
Vigil 2007 digital video installation duration 3 mins 45 secs, sound
Courtesy of the artist and goodman gallery, Johannesburg
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James WeBBbbeW SeMaJ ‘in the quiet confines of the hypnotherapist’s office, i would lie on a couch and slowly drift under to the measured pace of a guided meditation. after a while i felt like i was entering a dream space where i would see images as if watching a movie. like in dreams, everything made some sort of sense and i was aware and confident in the internal world i inhabited. i knew more or less who i was and i had an inkling of what i was doing there. With long pauses to take in the scenes, i described, aloud, the things i saw. naturally, this process of translating what i saw into words is a subjective and partial one. When you hear me say, “i am a young girl. i bite my fingernails. it’s a very cold morning and i’m on my way to school”, you don’t sense the billowing vapours coming from the steam engine as i wait on the platform. or see my wet dress and frayed mittens. the spoken words now serve to ignite the listener’s own imagination. after each session, lasting up to two hours, i would awake exhausted.’ James Webb’s Autohagiography incorporates audio recordings of the artist undergoing sessions of past-life hypnotic regression over a period of two years. motivated by ‘a desire to scrutinise myself under unfamiliar conditions’, Webb found himself narrating scenarios which he understood to have taken place across the globe and the breadth of human history. Identifiable locations included the roman occupation of Britain, feudal Japan, pre-latin america, edwardian england and post-great War poland. the scenes rarely involved climactic events, tending rather towards the quotidian, allowing Webb to observe the textures and details of the world around him. these are relayed to the listener in the flat, affectless voice of the subject under hypnosis, implying the disjuncture that exists between his ‘world’ and ours. as in the sessions themselves only fragments of lives are described; they run into each other, end abruptly or fade out. Webb’s meticulously crafted edit of his recordings is installed, via small speakers, in the backrest of a leather chaise longue that evokes the psychologist’s couch, with its associations of confession and catharsis. the listener, assuming the posture of the subject of the therapeutic process, finds him or herself intimately positioned to receive Webb’s own ‘confessions’, which he describes as a ‘remix of my subconscious’ and a ‘supernatural, sonic self-portrait’. the title of the work makes reference to The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. crowley the occultist and his system of ‘magick’ are important influences on Webb’s oeuvre, but the artist – a self-described agnostic – has his tongue firmly in his cheek when he declares that ‘I have proven myself to have died and been reborn, and therefore take my position as a saint’.
Autohagiography 2007 Chaise longue, speakers, Cd player, cables, audio (recordings of the artist under hypnosis) duration 72 mins; dimensions 73 x 180 x 65cm
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BIographIesSeihpargoib WiM botha was born in pretoria in 1974, and lives and works in Johannesburg. he has a ba in Visual art from the university of pretoria (1996). he was the Standard bank young artist for Visual art in 2005. Solo exhibitions include Apocalagnosia, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2007); A Premonition of War, touring grahamstown, port elizabeth, durban, bloemfontein, Cape town and Johannesburg (2005-2006); Cold Fusion: gods, heroes and martyrs, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2005); commune: onomatopoeia, klein karoo national arts Festival, oudtshoorn (2003). recent group exhibitions include Cape 07, Cape town (2007); Dak’Art, 7th dakar biennale, Senegal (2006); Olvida Quien Soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro atlantico de arte Moderno, las palmas, gran Canaria (2006); Africa Remix, touring düsseldorf, london, paris, tokyo, Stockholm, Johannesburg (2004-2007); Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art, Museum for african art and Cathedral of St John the divine, new york, and the Contemporary Museum, honolulu, hawaii (2004-2006).
Ângela Ferreira was born in 1958 in Maputo, Mozambique. She grew up in South africa, and obtained an MFa from the Michaelis School of Fine art, university of Cape town. She currently lives and works in lisbon, and has been selected to represent portugal at the 52nd Venice biennale. Selected solo exhibitions in recent years include Random Walk, galeria Filomena Soares, lisbon (2005); No Place at All, Museu do Chiado – Museu nacional de arte Contemporânea, lisbon (2003); Private Views, Museu nacional Soares dos reis, porto (2002); Zip Zap Circus School, institute of Contemporary art, Cape town (2002). Selected group exhibitions include (Re)volver, plataforma revólver, lisbon (2006); L’Universel? Dialogues avec Senghor, Joal Fadiouth, dakar university, Senegal (2003); Continuare, Maia biennial (2003); Squatters, Museu Serralves, porto, and Witte de With, rotterdam (2001).
MoShekWa langa was born in 1975 in bakenberg, limpopo. he studied at the rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in amsterdam (1997-98), and lives and works in amsterdam. recent solo exhibitions include The man who cast no shadows, galerie taché-lévy, brussels (2006); Moshekwa Langa, MaXXi – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXi secola, rome (2005); Present Tense, kunstverein düsseldorf (2004); Interior Monologues, Contemporary arts Center, Cincinnati (2003). Selected group exhibitions include Africa Remix, touring düsseldorf, london, paris, tokyo, Stockholm, Johannesburg (2004-2007); There & Back. Africa, la Casa encendida, Madrid (2006); Snap Judgements, international Center of photography, new york (2006); Olvida quien soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro atlantico de arte Moderno, las palmas, gran Canaria (2006); A Fiction of Authenticity, Contemporary art Museum, St louis, and other venues (2003-2006); Looking Both Ways, Museum for african art, new york, and other venues (2003-2006); Faultlines, Venice biennale (2003).
nandipha MntaMbo was born in 1982 in Swaziland. She lives and works in Cape town, where she is currently a Masters student at the Michaelis School of Fine art, university of Cape town. She exhibited her graduate work at the Michaelis School of Fine art and the african Studies library, university of Cape town, in 2004. She has been selected for the exhibition Local Racism Global Apartheid. South Africa as a Paradigm, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de barcelona, September 2007. group exhibitions include Olvida quien soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro atlantico de arte Moderno, las palmas, gran Canaria (2006); MTN New Contemporaries 2006, Johannesburg art gallery, Johannesburg (2006); Second to None, iziko South african national gallery, Cape town (2006); In the Making: Materials and Process, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2005).
SaMSon Mudzunga was born in 1938 in Shanzha, dopeni, in Venda (now limpopo), where he continues to live and work. recent solo exhibitions include Samson Mudzunga, Jack Shainman gallery, new york (2006); Suka Afrika Fundudzi, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2004); Suka Dzivha Fundudzi, Johannesburg art gallery, Johannesburg (2003). Selected group exhibitions include Turbulence, hangar-7, Salzburg, austria (2007); Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art, Museum for african art and Cathedral of St John the divine, new york, and the Contemporary Museum, honolulu (2004-2006); New Identities, Museum bochum, germany, and pretoria art Museum, pretoria (2004). recent performance pieces include 23 February 2006: Performance, the Contemporary Museum, honolulu; 9 February 2006: Performance, Jack Shainman gallery, new york; November 2005: Farewell performance, Venda.
Claudette SChreuderS was born in pretoria in 1973. She lives and works in Cape town. She has a baFa from the university of Stellenbosch (1994) and an MFa from the university of Cape town (1997). recent solo exhibitions include The Fall, Jack Shainman gallery, new york (2007); The Long Day, arizona State university, tempe, arizona, traveling to university art Museum, San diego State university, Ca, hand art Center, richmond, Va, atlanta College of art gallery, ga (2004); Crying in Public, Jack Shainman gallery, new york (2002). Selected group exhibitions include Since 2000: Printmaking Now, Museum of Modern art, new york (2006); Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art, Museum for african art and Cathedral of St John the divine, new york, and the Contemporary Museum, honolulu (2004-2006); Contact Zones: Colonial and contemporary, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2003); Coexistence, rose art Museum, brandeis university, Waltham, Ma (2003); Familie Verhalen uit Zuid Afrika, kit tropenmuseum, amsterdam (2002); Voices of South Africa, british Museum, london (2000).
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zineb Sedira was born in 1963 in paris to algerian parents. She moved to london in 1986, studying at Central St Martins, Slade School of art and the royal College of art. She currently lives in london and algiers. upcoming exhibitions include Global Feminisms at the elizabeth a Sackler Center, brooklyn Museum, new york (March) and the Sharjah biennial (april). recent solo exhibitions include Saphir, photographers’ gallery, london (2006); Zineb Sedira, galerie esma, algiers, Centre Culturel Français, oran and Constantine, algeria (2006); Zineb Sedira, Fri-art, Fribourg, Swizerland (2005); Telling stories with differences, Cornerhouse, Manchester, uk (2004). Selected group exhibitions: La Video: Un Art, Une Histoire 1965-2005, touring to venues in Sydney, taipei and Miami (2006); Africa Remix, touring düsseldorf, london, paris, tokyo, Stockholm (2004-2006); Around the world in 80 days, iCa and South london gallery, uk (2006); Identità & Nomadismo, palazzo delle papesse-Centro arte Contemporanea, Siena, italy (2005); Looking Both Ways, Museum for african art, new york, and other venues (2003-2005); A Fiction of Authenticity, Contemporary art Museum St louis, Missouri, and other venues (2003); Strangers, First triennial of photography and Video, international Center of photography, new york (2003); Self-Evident: Making the self the subject of art from 1970 to the present day, tate britain, london (2002); In/tangible Cartographies: New Arab Video, World Wide Video Festival, amsterdam, netherlands, and other venues (2001-2002); Authentic/Ex-centric: Africa in and out of Africa, 49th Venice biennale (2001).
penny SiopiS was born in 1953 and lives in Johannesburg where she teaches Fine arts at the university of the Witwatersrand. She has an MFa from rhodes university, grahamstown (1976). Solo exhibitions in recent years include Three Essays on Shame, Freud Museum, london (2005); Passions and Panics, goodman gallery, Johannesburg (2005); Shame, kappatos gallery, athens (2003); The Archive, tropen Museum, amsterdam (2002); Sympathetic Magic, Wits art galleries, university of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (2002). Selected group exhibitions include Migrations, belfast exposed, belfast, northern ireland (2006); Heimat als Idee/Homeland as Idea, basis gallery, Frankfurt (2006); Second to None, South african national gallery (2006); Out of Place, FlaCC Centrum voor kunsten en kultuur, genk, belgium (2005); Etchings, international print Centre, new york (2005); Arts Unlimited, basel art Fair, basel (2004); New Identities, Museum bochum, bochum (2004); Mine(d)fields, kunsthaus, basel (2004); Staged Realities, Michael Stevenson, Cape town (2004).
Minnette Vári was born in 1968 in pretoria, and lives and works in Johannesburg. She graduated from the university of pretoria with a Masters in Fine arts (1997). Solo shows in recent years include Minnette Vári, goodman gallery, Johannesburg (2007); Chimera (black edition), Victoria h Myhren gallery, university of denver, Colorado (2006); Festival artist, klein karoo national arts Festival, oudtshoorn (2005); Minnette Vári, galerie renee ziegler, zürich, Switzerland (2005); Minnette Vári,
kunstmuseum luzern, lucerne, Switzerland (2004); Media Work, Jannotta gallery, hillyer hall, Smith College, Massachusetts (2003); Aurora Australis, Standard bank gallery, Johannesburg (2001). Selected group exhibitions include Fairy Tale, tirana institute of Contemporary art, tirana, albania (2007); Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art, Museum for african art and Cathedral of St John the divine, new york, and the Contemporary Museum, honolulu (2004-2006); international biennale of Contemporary art, national gallery, prague (2005); La Allegría de Mis Sueños, First Seville international biennial of Contemporary art, Spain (2004); New Identities, Museum bochum, germany, and pretoria art Museum, pretoria (2004); Dimension Folly: Subjectivity, Passion and Excess in Everyday Life, galleria Civica di arte Contemporanea, trento, italy (2004); Banquet, Centre of Contemporary art palau de la Virreina, barcelona, Spain, and other venues (2003); Tranferts, palais des beaux arts, brussels (2003); Dislocation, Image & Identity: South Africa, Circulo de bellas artes, Madrid. Sala rekalde, bilbao, Spain (2002); Plateau of Humankind, Venice biennale (2001).
JaMeS Webb was born in kimberley in 1975. he lives and works in Cape town. he has been selected for the 2007 lyon biennial in September. he was in residence at CCa kitakyushu, Japan, in 2004-2005. recent solo projects include Untitled, blank projects, Cape town (2006); The Autumn Project, everywhere (2006); There’s No Place Called Home, amazonas, buenos aires, Johannesburg, guangzhou, yahata, Stellenbosch (2005-2006); Saturday night can be the loneliest place on earth, yahata, Japan (2005); Wa, ydesire, the Castle of good hope, Cape town (2003); Phonosynthesizer, nSa gallery, durban, and uS art gallery, Stellenbosch (2002-2003); Prayer, uS art gallery, Stellenbosch (2002). Selected group exhibitions include MTN New Contemporaries, Johannesburg art gallery, Johannesburg (2006); Incidental Amplifications, Melbourne, australia (2005); Typhoon, Maeda gallery, kitakyushu, Japan (2004); Listening to the world today, bbC World Service (2004); Brett Kebble Art Awards, Cape town international Convention Centre, Cape town (2004); A Decade of Democracy, South african national gallery, Cape town (2004); Radiotopia, ars electronica Festival, linz, austria (2002).
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acknoWledgements special thanks to all the artists for taking part in the exhibition and contributing to the catalogue, particularly zineb sedira and Ângela Ferreira who co-ordinated things from afar; to galerie kamel mennour, paris, for assistance with sedira’s participation; the goodman gallery, Johannesburg, for the participation of penny siopis and minnette Våri; andrew da conceicao for installation; gabrielle guy, ray du toit and mario todeschini for their work on the catalogue; and all the staff at michael stevenson.
catalogue no March 2007
editor Sophie perryer design gabrielle guy Installation andrew da Conceicao
photography Mario todeschini Image repro ray du toit printing hansa print, Cape town
MICHAEL STEVENSON www.michaelstevenson.com