Summer 2007/8 by Stevenson

SUMMER

2 0 0 7/ 8

Cover Youssef Nabil My time to go, self-portrait, Venice, 2007 (detail), diptych, hand-coloured silver gelatin print

SUM ME R 20 07/8 2 8 N o v e m b e r - 12 J a N u a r y

2 . . .......................... Youssef.Nabil 6 . . ................. Deborah.PoYNtoN 10........... ClauDette.sChreuDers 12............................ berNi.searle 18............................ traCY. PaYNe 22.............. DoreeN.southwooD 26..................... NiCholas.hlobo 30.................... DaviD. GolDblatt 36....................... MesChaC. Gaba 40................oDili.DoNalD.oDita 42.....................Mustafa.Maluka 44................ aNtoN.kaNNeMeYer 46..................... athi-Patra.ruGa 50........................ CoNraD.botes 54............................... wiM.botha 58............................. Pieter.huGo 64........................ ZaNele.Muholi 70................................ GuY.tilliM 74............... NaNDiPha.MNtaMbo 78................ saMsoN. MuDZuNGa 80.............................. hYltoN. Nel

Youssef Nabil b. 1972

Youssef Nabil’s first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson took place in June 2007 and was accompanied by the publication of his first book, Sleep in my arms. This series of hand-coloured photographs – continued here – shows images of boys asleep and undisturbed as well as self-portraits that hover in liminal spheres. The photographs are taken at times and in contexts where we veer into the unconscious, at twilight and at night, in beds and bedrooms, and in the realms of dreams and rest. The subjects, if awake, look aside, or, if asleep, are seemingly unaware of the presence of the camera in a space where they are on the edge of consciousness.

Never wanted to leave, self-portrait, Paris, 2007 Hand-coloured silver gelatin print

Nabil’s distinctive technique of hand-colouring silver gelatin prints recalls his

40 x 27cm

upbringing in Cairo where hand-coloured family portraits still adorn people’s

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living rooms. He became close friends with the Egyptian-Armenian photographer Van Leo, celebrated for his studio portraits of Egyptian actresses of the post-war

My time to go, self-portrait, Venice, 2007

years which he coloured in the same manner. The medium disrupts our sense of

Hand-coloured silver gelatin prints

time and place and our understanding of technique. The works incorporate both

Diptych, 40 x 27cm each

painting and photography; they both are and are not colour photographs, and in

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terms of evocative associations, they are and are not images of our time. Nabil was born in Cairo in 1972 and studied literature at Ain Shams University. While working as a photographers’ assistant in prominent studios in New York and Paris in the 1990s, he started producing his own staged, constructed and hand-coloured portraits of close friends, fellow artists and celebrities, as well as self-portraits. In 2003 he was awarded the Seydou Keita Prize for portraiture at the Biennial of African Photography in Bamako, Mali. His previous solo shows include Pour un Moment d’Éternité at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, in 2003, and Obsesiones at the Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, in 2001. His work has featured on numerous curated shows including, in 2006, Arabiske Blikke at the GL Strand Museum in Copenhagen; Word into Art at the British Museum, London; 19 miradas. Fotógrafos árabes contemporáneos, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain; and, in 2005, Nazar, Photographs from the Arab World, Aperture Foundation Gallery, New York, and Regards des Photographes Arabes Contemporains, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. He is currently working on a book and exhibition entitled Cinema that brings together photographs he has staged over the past 15 years reflecting his fascination with films in the Arab world.

Deborah PoYNtoN b. 1970

It is immediately apparent to the viewer that Deborah Poynton uses photographs in the process of constructing her paintings; however, the manner in which she does this is uncommon. Rather than adopting the approach of the photo-realists who meticulously translated a photographic image into paint, or following the widespread artistic practice of appropriating an image from the media, Poynton herself photographs her subjects specifically for a work that she has in her mind. Her subjects are always friends and people she knows, rather than a professional and anonymous model. As she explains:

Untitled 2007

I tend to direct the photographs rather than wait for something to present

Oil on canvas

itself. If it all seems awkward, I ask them to stand up and sit down and

200 x 300cm

resume the pose afresh. I do tell them where and how to sit and look. In the end, the final image of a person in the painting is usually pulled together from numerous photographs; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rarely derived from a single image. She paints the figurative elements first, and only once the figures have a presence and start commanding the canvas does she start creating a spatial context for them to enact the tableau. For this purpose she once again photographs particular spaces and objects or, in the case of smaller objects, paints from life. In this dynamic and organic process of realising the painted image through photography, she seamlessly integrates the diverse and unexpected sources, and further disrupts our sense of realism by conspicuously manipulating light, colour and perspective. Poynton exhibited four paintings at Warren Siebrits in Johannesburg in May 2007 and will show four new works at Galerie Mikael Andersen in Berlin in 2008. Her next solo show at Michael Stevenson is scheduled for the first half of 2009.

ClauDet te sChreuDers b. 1973

This print relates to a sculpture that Claudette Schreuders conceived in 2004 and exhibited at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York as part of Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art (illustrated in Personal Affects, vol 2, pp 66-7). In her solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, in February 2007, this figure was incorporated into a new series of works titled The Fall that brought the story of the Garden of Eden into our time. In this installation The Free Girl functioned as the central figure in a trinity. On one

The Free Girl

side stood The Bystander and on the other The Virgin. Schreuders envisaged these

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three sculptures as a still and reflective counterpoint to other figures that were

Hand-printed lithograph

actively caught up in the narrative.

105 x 68cm Edition of 15

The Free Girl stands upright with a blank stare, her expression suspended in time as is invariably the case with Schreuders’ figures. A snake curls around her shoulders, its tongue flickering near her left breast; she stands with her right foot on another snake. The concept behind the work draws on two diverse sources that nonetheless share similar aspects: the traditional African Mami Wata figure, in which the goddess embraces a snake as part of her power, and the Catholic figure of Mary with a snake that is symbolic of original sin. Schreuders has integrated elements of these different female figures in her sculpture which allows her goddess to be ‘free’ in the sense that she does not belong to any one religion or belief. Yet, there is irony in the fact that her freedom does not leave her untroubled. She is burdened by two snakes, one that she has killed and one that threatens to invade her, and she must make her own moral decisions between these two contradictory positions. Schreuders exhibited her print series The Long Day, based on a series of sculptures produced in 2003/4, at Michael Stevenson in May 2007. It has become an established part of her practice to translate her sculptural figures into prints – a method that began as a means of recording and revisiting the sculptures, but which also allows these very singular figures a different type of freedom in the world.

berNi searle b. 1964

Berni Searle is one of three artists selected for the Museum of Modern Art’s annual New Photography exhibition, and prints from her About to forget and Night Fall series are on view at MoMA until 1 January 2008. A survey of her work, curated by the Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, is currently at the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois. She participated in the 2007 residency programme at the ISCP in New York, and is 2007/8 visiting artist in residence at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Spirit of ‘76

Her latest work, Spirit of ’76, was commissioned by the printmaking initiative

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Philagraphika for Re:Print Re:Present Re:View, curated by Salah Hassan, at the Temple

Single channel projection

Gallery, Philadelphia. In this video, Searle continues her meditations around history,

DVD format, shot on HD digital video

memory and place, and draws on the idea of a vortex which engulfs everything in

Duration 6 mins 24 secs, sound

its reach and ultimately destroys all the elements in its centre. Searle’s imagery of six silhouettes, cut out of red crêpe paper, is based on the three figures leading a march in The Spirit of ‘76 by Archibald M Willard, said to be the most reproduced painting in the United States. In the video the silhouettes, circling a central rosette, slowly bleed their colour into the water. Searle then places a wreath of black crêpe paper flowers around the figures; gradually the colours intermingle in the whirling water, and the silhouettes fragment and collapse. The sound for the sequence is Richard Wagner’s American Centennial March, commissioned in 1876 by the city of Philadelphia in honour of the centenary of US independence. Searle has dramatically slowed the tempo of this march to provide a brooding and ominous accompaniment. Despite the near universality of the imagery, the title of the work evokes very different associations for different audiences: for Americans, their immediate connection would be US independence in 1776; for South Africans it would be the Soweto uprising of 1976. Yet the patriotic and revolutionary associations of the flag-bearing figures, and the shadows of nationalism embodied by the wreath, resonate powerfully across continents and specific contexts.

traCY PaYNe b. 1965

Tracy Payneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solo exhibitions at Michael Stevenson in 2005 and 2007, respectively titled Sacred Yin and Sacred Yang, have been concerned with concepts of earthly bondage and spiritual awakening, cycles of life, death and rebirth, and the interdependence of masculine and feminine principles. The recent Sacred Yang paintings, inspired by the Shaolin monks of China and their mastery of physical and mental discipline, represented an aspirational ideal, their dominant mood one of inner peace. But Payne also found a new direction in one particular series, Altered States, in which emotion was traced through the facial expressions of a monk, from

Slow Release

concentrated potential through to an uncontrolled outburst of energy.

2007 Japanese ink, watercolour, pencil, blusher and

In the new series, Slow Release, Payne continues this exploration of emotion,

eye shadow on paper

something that she notes is usually absent in portraiture. The serial format of the

7 paintings, 78.5 x 59cm each

work points to another key influence in her work: film, or specifically video. Unlike portraiture, the narrative-driven film is a medium in which intense emotions are frequently enacted. At the same time the viewer with a remote control has the ability to slow down or halt time, to linger over or analyse the otherwise transient. In Slow Release, Payne has freeze-framed the movements of a Japanese actress and reversed them, so that her attempt to strangle herself leads incrementally towards a state of serenity. At the same time her face reflects a change from childlike anguish to more adult acceptance. Self-inflicted bondage, linked to sexuality but more potently a metaphor for the ties that bind the self, is a recurrent theme in Payneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, as is the strong thread of autobiography.

DoreeN southwooD b. 1974

This major new installation by Doreen Southwood follows on from her two previous painted bronze figures – Mother and Child (2000) and The Swimmer (2003) – both of which garnered widespread acclaim. The work also relates to her recent large-scale public sculpture, Sindroom, installed in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in March 2007, of a child standing beside a playground swing. In all these previous works a single figure stands vulnerably alone; in the instance of The Swimmer, teetering on the edge of a diving board. In The Dancer, a figure is poised in four different positions on an oval structure, appearing to defy gravity despite the weight of the solid bronze.

The Dancer

Southwood’s passion for fashion – which finds expression in her shop MeMeMe – is

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evident in the tulle skirts that adorn these bronze figures, further accentuating their

Bronze, enamel paint, fabric, steel

apparent weightlessness and making obvious reference to Edgar Degas’ bronze

176 x 190 x 292cm

dancer which is also clothed in a fabric skirt.

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Southwood notes that each figure represents a moment in one continuous movement, the title reinforcing the singularity of the subject. She says: Of importance for me was to display a liquid state, a place where time loses its established value. In the public world of daily living, people seem to have reached a consensus on what is an acceptable timeframe within which daily schedules are structured. Only in the world of art making or performance is there more freedom to slow down time and draw the viewer’s attention to the myriad details – feelings and emotions – that make up each moment. The Dancer is included on the upcoming exhibition .za: giovane arte dal Sudafrica at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy (2 February – 4 May 2008).

NiCholas hlobo b. 1975

Nicholas Hlobo’s installation, Amaqanda’am, comprises a white cotton costumesculpture and a large sphere covered with the same fabric, attached to a silicone nipple. In Xhosa the phrase Amaqanda’am means ‘my eggs’, but it can also be used as a metaphor for testicles or one’s possessions or responsibilities. The sphere has its own title, Isitshaba, meaning ‘crown’, and – according to Hlobo – a reference to the gay slang expression ‘I would like to crown you’. The hooded cloak, adorned with cutwork embroidery, recalls at once the

Amaqanda’am

Voortrekkerskappie (the hood worn by female Dutch settlers in South Africa) and the

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costumes of the Ku Klux Klan. A long tail-like extension at one of the arms, and the

Installation comprising Isitshaba and untitled costume

costume’s juxtaposition with the sphere, however, suggest that those resemblances

Isitshaba: cotton, gauze, ribbon, silicone, sponge,

are secondary to the image of sperm and egg immediately prior to conception.

plywood 80 x 80 x 100cm

The installation was used by Hlobo in his performance at Aardklop, where he

Costume: cotton, Broderie Anglaise

was festival artist this year. This was his first performance to use sound and to

188 x 165cm

employ a second character, in this case a guitar player (the part taken here by Mathambo Nzuza, a musician who specialises in jazz and traditional Zulu music). In the performance, Hlobo, dressed in the white spermatozoid cloak, stages the moment of conception through a ballet for man and sphere. He sings in a loud, wailing Xhosa about how, as a gay man, he is repeatedly told that he will not bear children. In response, his song offers his sculptures as proof that he can give birth to something that will outlast his own time on earth. In 2007, Hlobo had solo exhibitions at Extraspazio, Rome; the Savannah College for Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia; and at the Aardklop Nasionale Kunstefees in Potchefstroom. His second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson will be in March/ April 2008. He is one of the artists selected for Flow, a survey show of young African art at the Studio Museum in Harlem, opening April 2008, and in July 2008 he will present a new solo project at the ICA Boston as part of their Momentum series.

DaviD GolDbl att b. 1930

David Goldblatt’s photographs of the last decade are an ongoing exploration of the intersections between people, values and land in post-apartheid South Africa. They develop and take into new terrain the approach underlying much of his work in the years of apartheid, work which culminated in his monumental South Africa: The Structure of Things Then (published by Oxford, 1998). This series was exhibited at the South African National Gallery, Cape Town, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1998.

Full captions overleaf

In his upcoming solo show, Intersections Intersected, at Michael Stevenson in January/February 2008, photographs from various essays undertaken in the years

Monument honouring Karel Landman ... 10 April 1993

of apartheid have been paired with photographs from his post-apartheid work. The

Silver gelatin print on fibre paper

resulting many-layered dynamic might be regarded as a meditation on continuity

20 x 24cm

and change in South Africa. It also clearly reveals the connectedness of vision and thought that runs through all of Goldblatt’s work – early and recent, black-and-

The commemoration of Karel Landman ... 20 February 2006

white and colour.

Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper 112 x 137.5cm

Structures, a focus of Goldblatt’s photography, continue to be embedded with

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the values and ideologies of their makers, and this is most clearly evident in monuments, memorials and places of worship. In South Africa many of these

The Cross Roads (sic) People’s Park ... 22 November 1986

structures are interesting in their awkwardness. As Goldblatt articulates:

Silver gelatin print on fibre paper 20 x 24cm

South Africa is not a society in which expression has been muted by obfuscating encrustations of centuries of art and refinement. Even when we

At Kevin Kwanele’s Takwaito Barber ... 16 May 2007

attempt symbolism it has the quality of clumsy transparency rather than

Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

dissimulation. Our structures often declare quite nakedly, yet eloquently,

112 x 137.5cm

what manner of people built them, and what they stood for. There was

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– and is – a rawness to the forces at work here that is evidenced in much of what we have built.’ (South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, p11) Goldblatt concludes his introduction to South Africa: The Structure of Things Then by looking forward: ‘We are in a new time. What its values and spirit will be and how these will be expressed and evidenced in the structures brought forth has hardly begun to emerge’ (p20). In his colour work of recent years Goldblatt witnesses the shifts in power and changing perceptions of history that have emerged and

continue to manifest themselves through structures, some neglected, some reconfigured, and some newly constructed. In the first pair illustrated overleaf, a three-metre globe celebrating Karel Landman, a Voortrekker leader from this area in the Eastern Cape, photographed in 1993 and again in 2006, continues to assert its presence in the rolling landscape through the changing political dispensations since its unveiling on 16 December 1939. In the second juxtaposition, a recent image taken in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, from Goldblatt’s In the time of AIDS series is paired with an image of the Cross Roads People’s Park in a township in the former Transvaal in 1986. Both these photographs reflect on struggles – then against apartheid and now against AIDS – and symbols of hope. The peace parks were among the very few structures to emerge spontaneously during the years of apartheid as popular expressions of resistance and hope, and the AIDS ribbon, which has permeated all aspects of our landscape, remains a quiet reminder of an awareness and consciousness of a struggle that has yet to be won. (See South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, pp 200, 240.) Goldblatt’s work was included on Documenta 12 (as well as the previous Documenta 11 in 2002). His show that accompanied the Hasselblad Award in 2006 has toured in Scandinavia over the past year, and the retrospective exhibition curated by Martin Parr for Arles in 2006 travelled to the Forma centre for photography in Milan and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.

Monument honouring Karel Landman who farmed in this area until 1837, when he became a leader in the Great Trek. He took a party of 180 Whites and their servants on a trek of 885 kilometres into Natal where he was prominent in several battles with the Zulus. De Kol, Eastern Cape. 10 April 1993

The commemoration of Karel Landman and his trek, in this 3m globe, was an initiative of the National Party and the councils of the Dutch Reformed Church in two neighbouring villages, Alexandria and Patterson. Legend has it that the councils could not agree which village should â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the monument, so it was placed on this remote koppie between the two villages. De Kol, Eastern Cape. 20 February 2006

The Cross Roads (sic) People’s Park was built by the youth of Oukasie, the Black township of Britz, during the mid-1980s when the government tried to ‘persuade’ residents to move to what it claimed was a model township, Letlhabile Removal Camp. Similar parks appeared in Oukasie and other Transvaal townships at the time. They proclaimed democracy and justice, they had benches, tables, shaded pergolas, sculpture and symbolic artillery (pointed invariably at the local police station) made from debris and scrap. The parks were among the very few physical structures to emerge during the years of apartheid as symbolic expressions of popular resistance and hope. They were destroyed by the security forces during the State of Emergency of 1986-1989. Oukasie, Brits, North-West. 22 November 1986

At Kevin Kwaneleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Takwaito Barber, Lansdowne Road. Khayelitsha, Cape Town in the time of AIDS. 16 May 2007

MesChaC Gaba b. 1961

Meschac Gaba’s first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson took place in July/August 2007. He showed a new series of Tresses, sculptures of buildings made out of artificial hair braids that he has previously produced in New York, Paris, London and Benin. For his South African show he created 10 sculptures based on landmarks including the Reserve Bank in Tshwane, 11 Diagonal Street in Johannesburg and the Castle in Cape Town. His South African Tresses can be seen, alongside other recent projects, in his solo show at Johannesburg Art Gallery (until 26 January 2008).

Colours of Cotonou

Like the Tresses series, Gaba’s Colours of Cotonou, included on the Johannesburg

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show, reflects his whimsical approach to sculpture. The installation consists of

Beninese banknotes, found objects, wooden frames,

an ever-changing number of frames, some of which contain what appear to be

glass

random objects, many left empty. The frames are covered in fragments of Beninese

Installation dimensions variable

money, a source material which Gaba has used before, most recognisably in four of the prints that accompany his Tresses. The found objects, or, in Gaba’s preferred

Photos: John Hodgkiss

term, found colours, are all everyday objects from Cotonou, Benin, where this installation was first shown. Gaba says: For my most recent exhibition in Benin, I told people I would like to do a painting show. People were shocked, they told me I had moved on and wasn’t a painter anymore. But I just wanted to have fun and told people I could do whatever I wanted. They were very curious about what I would paint. So I told them I was not going to paint anything – everything was already there! I called the show Colours of Cotonou and it consisted of found colours (walls, clothing, etc), which I framed with frames made out of money. The word cadre in French can mean both ‘frame’ and ‘political boss’, so I liked the ambiguity and the suggestion of corruption. Anyway, when you first see the work, the pastels don’t look very African, but nobody can complain because I did not make them up myself – I found them in Benin. Afterwards, people came to me and told me it was the first time they had properly looked at their own country. Gaba was born in 1961 in Cotonou, Benin. He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1996/7, and currently lives in Rotterdam. He was included on the touring exhibition Africa Remix, and in 2006 participated in the São Paolo, Gwangju, Sydney and Havana biennales.

oDili DoNalD oDita b. 1966

Odili Donald Odita, who will have his first solo show at Michael Stevenson in June/ July 2008, exhibited enormous wall paintings at this year’s 52nd Venice Biennale. He inaugurated the new Project Room at the Studio Museum in Harlem with a wall painting titled Equalizer (on display until April 2008), and has just completed an expansive wall work, Flow, for the new Zaha Hadid-designed Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. Odita’s commission for a building designed by Hadid is an inspired pairing. Given their different mediums, they share an aesthetic of fractured and intersecting hardedged planes that are optically and spatially disruptive. Odita was born in Nigeria,

A Third Power

but even though there are references in his distinctive aesthetic to Nigerian

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patterns and designs, he strongly resists classification in terms of this tradition. He

Acrylic on canvas

cites the television test pattern, screensavers, wallpaper and landscapes as well

213 x 277cm

as North American modernism as points of departure for his imagery. In addition, he does not direct interpretation through his titles. In his mind, the different associations that his rhythmic and vivid abstracts personally evoke are all valid and legitimate. However, analogies to music and sound are often noted in critiques of his work. For example, Olu Oguibe relates his paintings to modal jazz, yet reminds us of the contentions that are latent in Odita’s aesthetic: In the same manner that modal jazz aspires toward pure sound, Odita’s paintings achieve a significant level of visual and chromatic purity that lends them vibrancy and spaciousness. His use of space is lean, deep and resonant. Even so, in the same way that modal jazz refined social protest into spare but inimitably infectious sound, with Coltrane’s notes imbued with the eloquent sound of activism, Odita’s elements are in fact loaded with social questions and implications as well as challenges for abstraction as a language: How does abstraction deal with the reality of race in the post-millennial age, for instance? How does pigment speak to our obvious diversity and the beauty of that diversity, as well as the insidious machinations of exoticism and stereotypy? How do social striations translate on canvas? (‘Artists on Artists’, BOMB Magazine, 89, Fall 2004) Odita lives in Philadelphia where he is Associate Professor of Painting at the Tyler School of Art.

Mustafa Maluk a b. 1976

Mustafa Malukaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s portraits of imaginary people evolve from photographic images which catch his eye in magazines and on the internet. He is drawn to images of anonymous people who have a connecting gaze and a presence, and their features are a starting point for his portraits. However, these faces, in the process of painting, take on a life of their own and, at the time of completion, seldom bear any resemblance to the image that inspired the artist. These monumental portraits of made-up characters are given titles that are phrases from lyrics and music rather than references to the identity of the sitter. Accordingly, they become metaphors

No more keeping my feet on the ground

for sentiments and emotions rather than a representation of a sitter. Even though

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Maluka only paints head-and-shoulder portraits in this one format, each face is

Oil on canvas

distinctly individuated in its expressions and stance. He achieves this quality by

183 x 133cm

building up layers of washes on the faces to determine the mood of the work. These painterly passages are in turn contrasted by the flat colour and bold pattern and design elements of the clothes and background that pulsate and accentuate the aura of the imaginary persona. Maluka had a solo show at Michael Stevenson in February/March and another with Bertrand & Gruner in Geneva in September. He has an upcoming exhibition with Mikael Andersen in Berlin in January 2008. His paintings will be included on Flow at the Studio Museum in Harlem in April.

aNtoN kaNNeMeYer b. 1967

For Anton Kannemeyer – co-editor with Conrad Botes of the Bitterkomix series – no image or idea has ever been sacred. His forthright and frank manner is especially refreshing in a country like South Africa, where analysis is frequently stifled because of overriding sensitivities. He unrelentingly exposes the neurosis of the nation and, in particular, of a white minority whose Calvinist and bigoted beliefs blind them to embracing the changes in power and politics. Kannemeyer’s new work forms part of the Nightmare series, an extension of his

White Nightmare: Black Dicks

Alphabet of Democracy which was included on the 2006 season exhibition at

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Michael Stevenson. In a recent text written on the occasion of Kannemeyer’s

Acrylic on canvas

exhibition at The Beam Gallery at Spier, Stellenbosch, Danie Marais reflects on these

138 x 150cm

bodies of work that confront the fears and paranoias of the rainbow nation:

Illustrated:

He has turned his focus from the sins, perversions and sexual repression of

Sketch for White Nightmare: Black Dicks

the fathers to the bigger post-Apartheid picture. The Alphabet still sharply

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comments on the madness directly below the surface of the rabidly conformist

Black ink and acrylic on paper

parts of white South African society, especially the Afrikaans community.

21 x 29.7cm

But as the title indicates, it is also concerned with the current mutations of bigotry bred by political correctness, financial greed and the hollow rainbow and renaissance rhetoric of a new political hierarchy. The use of the word ‘democracy’ becomes subversive in the context of this layered artwork which portrays the liberated South African society and its form of government as just another arbitrary social order fraught with moral ambiguity and human absurdity. Kannemeyer tackles a lot of issues politicians and journalists tend to shy away from by using a mixture of the stereotypes associated with political cartooning and combining it with the deeply personal, the irreverent and the surrealism of the subconscious. His idiosyncratic mash-up of allegory, history, existentialist nausea, self-loathing and nihilism makes for a heady brew … Kannemeyer’s work is currently included on From and To at Kunst Merano Arte in Merano, Italy.

athi-Patra ruGa b. 1984

A show by Athi-Patra Ruga, titled She is Dancing in the Rain with her Hand in the Toaster, opened our side gallery series in June. Shortly afterwards he took up a residency in Bern, Switzerland, where he produced the Even I Exist in Embo series with Swiss photographer Oliver Neubert. These photographs are part of a larger project around the Injibhabha, the name Ruga has given to a creature he describes as an Afrowomble, loosely based on the 1980s children’s TV series, The Wombles. Ruga describes his working method as resulting from ‘the clash between material

with Oliver Neubert

and memory’, but notions of utopia and dystopia also form a common thread. The title of this series is derived from Et in Arcadia Ego, a Latin phrase that roughly

Even I Exist in Embo: Jaundiced tales of counterpenetration

translates as ‘Even I exist in Arcadia’, and is best known as the title of two paintings

#1–5

by Nicolas Poussin. Ruga has replaced the utopian Arcadia of Greek mythology with

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Embo, a parallel notion drawn from the Xhosa folklore with which he grew up.

Lambda prints 60 x 40cm each

The significance of the title was accentuated by the controversies around the

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recent Swiss elections, which took place during Ruga’s residency. An election poster for the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) depicting three white sheep standing on the Swiss flag, kicking a black sheep out of their group, pandered to Swiss xenophobia and sparked protests. Ruga made the Injibhabha costume prior to these events, but its startling resemblance to the figure of the black sheep ensured that the work took on a political dimension. In Poussin’s work, the title points to the inevitable presence of death in Arcadia. For Ruga, the title refers to the presence of outsiders like himself – symbolised by the Injibhabha – and the apprehensions they raise as a result of their presence in the SVP’s fictional racially pure Swiss utopia. Ruga held an exhibition in Bern at the conclusion of his residency, and is currently included in Impossible Monsters, the opening exhibition of the Johannesburg gallery Art Extra, with a work featuring performance artist Christopher Martin. Besides being active as an artist, Ruga owns a clothing label, Just Nje/Amper Couture. He was nominated for the Africa is in Fashion (L’Afrique est à la mode) competition, which took place in Niamey, Niger, in November.

CoNraD botes b. 1969

Conrad Botes’ first solo show at Michael Stevenson, Satan’s Choir at the Gates of Heaven, took place in May 2007 and was accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Ivor Powell. Commenting on Botes’ iconography, Powell wrote: The spiritual stratum that Botes mines is an archaeological and largely decomposed mulch of broken images, holy books and shattered votive statues – the detritus of the imagery of the Christian religion, left over when God died. Its discursive elements – devils, the sacraments of salvation, the

Requiem

conundrums of passion, divinity and mortality, the mystical narrative of good

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versus evil – continue to carry an archetypal and visceral charge, a kind of

Acrylic paint, oil-based paint on glass, enamel on

trace memory of their formerly numinous status. But, in a reappropriation

obechie wood

that is as much post-modern as it is post-existentialist, Botes’ symbols are

Figure 95cm high, installation dimensions variable

cut off from their symbolic reference and the version of the world which guaranteed their meaningfulness in the first place. They are crippled and

Photos: Jan Verboom

radically dysfunctional – manifesting more their own redundancy than anything else – no longer capable of transcendence, or even of saving themselves. The numinous reduced in the cauldron of discourse to splatter. Botes points to the primacy of drawing in his work – whether as the basis for the comics he produces as one half of the Bitterkomix duo (with Anton Kannemeyer), or the diverse media which he brings together in the gallery context. His new piece, Requiem, is a case in point, combining sculpture, reverse-glass painted roundels and wall painting – the latter medium increasingly favoured by Botes as a way to experiment technically with format and scale. Another large wall work incorporating roundels, titled Foreign Body, can be seen on Apartheid: The South African Mirror at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (until 13 January 2008), travelling to Fundacion Bancaja, Valencia (5 February – 30 April 2008).

wiM botha b. 1974

Wim Botha was the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2005. His work has featured on a number of international group exhibitions in the past year, including Africa Remix which ended its tour at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2007. His third solo show at Michael Stevenson, Apocalagnosia, was in January/February 2007, and his work is to be seen in Political Iconography at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin (until 19 January 2008). For his Africa Remix installation in Johannesburg and Political Iconography in Berlin,

Small God Vitrine

Botha showed works, similar to this new piece, that consider the associations of a

2007

vitrine in terms of its form and content. A vitrine, or glass cabinet, would usually

Wood, mirrors, Rhodesian teak parquet blocks, gold leaf,

function as a repository of accumulated objects that are of special significance

brown paper tape

to a person and embedded with both emotional and intellectual references to

304 x 67 x 70cm

their lives. These collections, of usually disparate, often delicate objets, collectively describe a life, and at the end of a life are inherited, dispersed or discarded. In Bothaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstracted forms of a vitrine he inserts mirrored panels in which we confront not only our own reflection but, more importantly, the imagined and infinite objects and images from memory, of things seen and remembered, that could be reflected on these surfaces. The sculpted busts and forms mounted above the vitrine define the focus or intent of each work. Although the actual reflections seen in the mirror surfaces are still subject to chance or circumstance, the associative context provided by this crown element steers the interpretation of the reflections, whether actual or imagined. In addition, the vitrine forms take on another role in the context of a gallery. They are not concerned with the finite contents inside, and our associated subjective responses, but become something of an omniscient object that, in a more dispassionate manner, reflects on the infinite world around it.

Pieter huGo b. 1976

Pieter Hugo is the Standard Bank Young Artist for 2007, and an exhibition of his new series Messina/Musina is touring public galleries in South Africa until mid-2008. This series is also currently on show at Extraspazio in Rome, and is accompanied by a book featuring an interview with the artist by Joanna Lehan (Punctum, Rome, 2007). Musina is the northernmost town in South Africa. It lies on the Limpopo River on the border of Zimbabwe. The town was formerly known as Messina, and in 2002 its name was changed to correct a colonial misspelling of the name of the Musina

Pieter and Maryna Vermeulen with Timana Phosiwa

people who previously lived in the region. Located in the heart of the bushveld

Martie and Morkel Smith, their son Stephen and his fiancée

with its hunting farms and diamond mines, on the major trucking route north, it

Illze Venter with their dog Snooze

attracts a conglomeration of disparate peoples. The circumstances of Musina can

Cardboard bed in an abandoned building

also be seen as broadly reflective of any community that is confronted by transition

Rest area on the road to Tshipise

and on a frontier. In the series of family portraits that are at the core of this body of

Thina Lucy Manebaneba with her son Samuel Mabolabola

work Hugo subverts traditional bright, commercial family portraits. As he says:

and her brother Enos Manebaneba in their living room after church

There is something very strange about the type of commissioned family

2006

portrait – its portrayal is based on an unrealistic ideal. In truth, families are

C-prints, in 3 sizes

complex and difficult. I don’t know anyone who has an easy relationship

121.5 x 102.5cm

with their family. I don’t think there is such a thing as a functioning family.

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By their very nature families are dysfunctional. So by taking on this aesthetic,

152.5 x 128.5cm

I’m subverting that notion in a way. Applying that idealised notion, but

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showing it an imperfect way. … I am engaging with humanity in all its

202.5 x 168.5cm

complexity – why should I whitewash it? But, of course, life is full of irony.

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There is something strange about a family that wants their picture taken together, but the moment you leave the room they start arguing. Hugo has a solo exhibition of his series The Hyena Men at Yossi Milo in New York in December 2007 and at Bertrand & Gruner in Geneva in April 2008. A book on this series has been published by Prestel (2007). His work has been included on numerous recent group exhibitions including the photography triennial Lumo ’07, Jyväskylä, Finland; the Hereford Photography Festival; and An Atlas of Events at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.

ZaNele Muholi b. 1972

Zanele Muholi’s Faces and Phases is a series of portraits of black lesbian women, which in their frank and disarming manner unravel stereotypical assumptions about dress and gender. Describing the project as ‘a journey of visual activism’ to ensure black lesbian visibility, she writes: Individuals in this series of photographs hold different positions and play many different roles within the black lesbian community: soccer player, actress, scholar, cultural activist, lawyer, dancer, filmmaker, human rights/gender activist.

Faces and Phases

However, each time we are represented by outsiders, we are merely seen as

2007

victims of rape and homophobia. Our lives are always sensationalised, rarely

Lambda prints

understood. This is the reason for ‘phases’: our lives are not just what makes the

60.5 x 86.5cm each

newspapers headlines every time one of us is attacked. We go through many

Editions of 8

stages, we express many identities, which unfold in parallel in our existence. From an insider’s perspective, this project is meant as a commemoration and a celebration of the lives of black lesbians that I met in my journeys through the townships. Lives and narratives are told with both pain and joy, as some of these women were going through hardships in their lives. Their stories caused me sleepless nights as I did not know how to deal with the urgent needs I was told about. Many of them had been violated. I did not want the camera to be a further violation; rather, I wanted to establish relationships with them based on our mutual understanding of what it means to be female, lesbian and black in South Africa today. Muholi showed photographs of black lesbian couples, another ongoing series, at Michael Stevenson in June/July 2007. Most of these images, which range from the intimacy of the bedroom through to public displays of commitment, are so quiet in their stance that it can easily be forgotten how unprecedented they are in South Africa and Africa. She also continues to photograph black gay boys celebrating their sexuality, often in very public and flamboyant gestures. Seven of Muholi’s portraits of black lesbians are included in the 100th Camera Austria issue and accompanying exhibition of work from the Market Photo Workshop. She is currently studying in Toronto.

Top Matshidiso Mofokeng Bottom Nomonde Mbusi

Top left Nonzwakazi P Ncapayi Top right Sindi Shabalala Bottom left Nosipho Solundwana Bottom right Siza Khumalo

Top left Dikeledi Sibanda Top right Tumi Mkhuma Bottom left Thembi Nyoka Bottom right Tumi Mokgosi

Top left Nosi ‘Ginga’ Marumo Top right Paballo Molele Bottom left Amanda ‘China’ Nyandeni Bottom right Lesego Magwai

Top left Sosi Molotsane Top right Pearl Hlongwane Bottom left Zethu Matebeni

GuY tilliM b. 1962

These three photographs were taken by Guy Tillim in Porto Novo, Benin. He is currently realising a new body of work that reflects on the civic architecture conceived in the idealism of the last years of colonialism and the immediate postcolonial period. In the French and Portuguese colonies, in particular, modernist architecture was expressly used to convey the ideology of the era. Tillim, in his photography, has resisted focusing on the formalism of the architecture itself and instead considers the effects of repeated shifts in power over the past half-century on the meaning of this architecture. To date he has travelled to Porto Novo in

Jessica Yesufi and Ajoke Edwardo, Porto Novo, Benin 2007

Benin; Kinshasa and Lubumbashi in the Congo; Maputo, Mozambique; Luanda,

Facina, voodoo priest, at his temple, Porto Novo, Benin 2007

Angola; and Antsiranana in Madagascar. However, his eye also notices moments

Facina’s house, Porto Novo, Benin 2007

and circumstances that are not central to the focus of this series but that he is nevertheless drawn to. These three photographs are cases in point.

Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper 91.5 x 131.5cm

Tillim’s Congo Democratic series has recently been included on both Documenta 12

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and the 27th São Paulo Bienal, and was also exhibited at Extraspazio in Rome and the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in the past year. His new body of work will be exhibited at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University at the end of 2008 as part of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography which he was awarded last year. A retrospective of his work will be shown at Haus Fuer Kunst Uri in Altdorf, Switzerland, in March 2008 and will travel to other museums including the Cartier Bresson Foundation in Paris. His Congo Democratic series has been selected for the Biennale Cuvée at the OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria, which opens in February 2008.

NaNDiPha MNtaMbo b. 1982

Nandipha Mntambo graduated with a Master’s degree (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Art in June 2007. In August/September she held her first solo show at Michael Stevenson, exhibiting her distinctive cowhide sculptures and a new series of photographic prints based on her installation Beginning of the Empire. The latter is currently included on Apartheid: The South African Mirror at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (until 13 January 2008), travelling to Fundacion Bancaja, Valencia (5 February – 30 April).

Inftombi mfana

Mntambo’s latest works are the start of a long-term project around bullfighting,

2007

as well as the artist’s first foray into performance and video. Fascinated by the

Cowhide including ears, faces and tails, waxed cord

ritualised action, public spectacle and charged emotion of the bullfight, Mntambo

Height 165cm

describes the project as ‘the practice of my future’, a tentative ‘feeling out’ of the territory. The video, Ukungenisa (indicating the mental and physical preparation

Ukungenisa

for a fight, and the opening of a path to allow something to happen), captures

2007

the artist literally rehearsing the steps of a bullfighter whom she filmed in Lisbon,

Video

juxtaposed with footage of the fight and the crowd of spectators. This attempt

Duration 1 min 30 secs, sound

to take on the persona of the bullfighter represents a shift for Mntambo, whose previous work effectively invited the viewer to take her place, to step into the outline of her body as defined by the moulded cowhide. In the course of the project Mntambo envisages being trained as a bullfighter and staging her own fight in the abandoned Praça de Touros in Maputo, the arena where black Mozambicans once fought for the entertainment of the colonial Portuguese. To this end she has made herself a bullfighter’s jacket from her signature cowhide, a means to ‘interpret and take ownership of the tradition’. The title of this work, Inftombi mfana, means ‘tomboy’, or a girl taking on a male persona. The cows’ ears that form the rear of the jacket introduce the idea of an imaginary crowd bearing witness to her performance. Mntambo’s work has been selected for .za: giovane arte dal Sudafrica at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy (2 February – 4 May 2008); and Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (27 March – 7 September 2008).

saMsoN MuDZuNGa b. 1938

On the exhibition Afterlife at Michael Stevenson in March/April 2007, Samson Mudzunga showed what he announced to be ‘the biggest drum ever made!’ For Mudzunga, size clearly matters, given that his drums – and the rebirth performances that he enacts by ‘burying’ himself within them – are intimately linked to his own sense of vitality. The title of the drum, Vivho Venda – meaning ‘jealousy in Venda’ – gives an indication of the response that his confidence in his own powers has elicited from certain sectors in his community, particularly the traditional hierarchy that he is compelled to challenge by claiming access to

Fundudzi Fish

Venda’s sacred lake, Fundudzi.

2007 Wood, cowhide, fabric, paint, polish, wheels

Mudzunga’s latest large-scale drum, Fundudzi Fish, once again asserts the

85 x 323 x 65cm

centrality of the lake in the artist’s personal mythology. It is water from the lake that Mudzunga claims gives him his powers as well as the dreams that guide his actions. Inside, the drum is lined with fabric and decorated with pillows – home comforts that confirm the artist’s sense of belonging, both within Fundudzi and the art gallery context. Accompanying the fish is a small elephant drum, which – in another typical reversal of hierarchy – resides inside the fish when it is not being used in performance. In 2007 Mudzunga was included on the exhibition Turbulence at Hangart-7 in Salzburg, Austria. He has been nominated for the 2008 DaimlerChrysler Award focusing on art in public spaces.

hYltoN Nel b. 1941

Hylton Nel’s work veers between irreverence and playful humour and sadness and anger. With this large vase and the set of seven plates he both celebrates and questions daily life in South Africa. The vase commemorates the victory of the South African Springboks rugby team in the World Cup and reflects the jubilation and eruption of nationalism that spread through the country when the team returned with the Webb Ellis trophy. In the series of plates titled Tell us the truth Mr President Nel reminds us of the many occasions in the past year when President Thabo Mbeki’s judgment has been called into question. Around a central plate

Webb Ellis Trophy made of gold, South Africa 2007

bearing the script are six plates decorated with demons, strange creatures and

2007

people who dance around the truth. In Mbeki’s case, such contested areas include

Glazed ceramic

his handling of the AIDS crisis and his controversial health minister, the arms

54.5 x 23 x 21cm

deal, corruption, and the battle for succession itself. Then again, the president in

(Reverse illustrated on p84)

question could be George W Bush – or many other politicians.

Tell us the truth Mr President

Nel’s work was recently included in The Discerning Eye at the Mall Galleries in

2007

London in a selection curated by Charles Saumarez Smith. An exhibition of his

Set of 7 plates, glazed ceramic

recent work will run concurrently to the summer show at Michael Stevenson.

Diameter 26cm each

Catalogue no 32

Written by Michael Stevenson, Sophie Perryer and Joost Bosland

November 2007

Design by Gabrielle Guy Photography by Mario Todeschini Image repro by Ray du Toit Printed by Hansa Print

MICHAEL STEVENSON www.michaelstevenson.com