Archive: Issue No. 54, Februray 2002

X
Go to the current edition for SA art News, Reviews & Listings.
ARTTHROB
LISTINGS REVIEWS NEWS ARTBIO WEBSITES PROJECT EXCHANGE FEEDBACK ARCHIVE SUBSCRIBE
REVIEWS / GAUTENG

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas
'Displacements'
Installation views

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas

Marie Ange Bordas
'Displacements'
Installation details


Marie Ange Bordas at the Bag Factory
by Kathryn Smith

I met Marie Ange Bordas towards the end of last year. Her arrival in Johannesburg for her stint at the Bag Factory coincided with Canadian artist Mara Verna's departure. The two artists seemed to be each other's counterfoil - Verna outrageously sociable, Bordas quieter, but with a tangible sense of intent. Brazilian but now based in Paris after a period in New York, Bordas works primarily in socially based installation and was intending to begin a project with refugees in Johannesburg. Her show opened this week, and was characterised not by "Art", nor the traditional idea of a resolved body of work. Rather, it was marked by a real engagement with those she collaborated with - mostly children and others who experience life in Johannesburg as refugees.

Visiting residents to the Bag Factory can always expect to facilitate, assist in or initiate workshops with community groups, outreach programmes and other institutions. While this aspect of the residency opportunity is usually additional to - but no less valuable than - the artist's own pursuits, some artists switch this focus. Bordas is one of them.

Working with the Trauma Clinic (a division of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation) to produce The Memory-House and artists from the St Francis de Sales Home to make The Shadow-House, the work gathered for 'Displacements' is the first step in what Bordas would like to see become a two-year project working with refugees and organisations around the world.

Two structures occupy a large portion of the Bag Factory gallery, one constructed from corrugated iron and the other from diaphanous fabric stretched over a frame. The metal structure is open, with garments hanging from the low roof. Recorded voices recounted personal experiences of the trauma and danger of crossing borders to enter South Africa. The fabric house is closed, but internally lit. Garments and objects (a teddy bear, a birdcage) hang from the ceiling but are only visible as shadows from outside.

She says of the show: "This project is about looking for a safe place, moving endlessly towards belonging, crossing visible and invisible borders ... It is about displacement and the way it shapes our identities and defines our interaction with others and space. One can be displaced being a modern nomad and having the choice ... or being a refugee and having no choice ... As an artist I am an interactive observer, I am also part of the subject and hopefully a link between the people I'm working with and the public. 'Displacements' is a work-in-progress where the process surpasses the resulting artwork itself. It is through interaction with others that I find myself and my place of belonging."

This link between Bordas' status as "modern nomad with choice" - as are many of the Bag Factory's visiting residents - and her collaborators did not feel trite or forced. In a separate room, photographs and texts documented the workshops which produced a small mini-town village of handcrafted homes that snaked down the side of the gallery. Bordas' own hand was most clearly visible in large digital prints - iconic and metaphoric "portraits" of her central concerns - paint-stained hands, maps and bodies in half-dissolve and a powerful shot of an inner city apartment block at night. Highly aesthetic, these images possess a cleanness that would make them ideal poster images for the UN.

In 'Displacements', Bordas touches on a very hot topic - that of "amakwerekwere" - the pejorative moniker given to people from elsewhere in Africa. Xenophobia is rife on the streets of Hillbrow and elsewhere, but is more often treated sensationally than sensitively. Bordas managed to engage the protagonists of this situation, as well as present herself and her process in a frank and open manner.

This is the value of the Bag Factory, or the Fordsburg Artists' Studios as it is formally known. An initiative that sprung from artists' workshops some 10 years ago, it was co-founded by Robert Loder and David Koloane and is affiliated to the Triangle Arts Trust. Run by Koulla Xinisteris and administered by James French, the Bag Factory's praises must be sung for some truly inspired choices of recent international guests. Mara Verna was one, Gustavo Artigas from Mexico was another. Current resident Veronique Tadjo, who divides her time between writing and painting (and whose exhibition opens this Saturday), encapsulates a multi-disciplinary artistic practice.

The purpose of the Bag Factory is to integrate internationally based artists with the local artwork fabric, as well as with the permanent Bag Factory resident artists, who have the benefit of access to these visitors on the premises, as it were. Local museums and institutions often don't have the financial means to host exhibitions by international contemporaries, whether younger or more established. The Bag Factory is one place that tries to alleviate what often feels like a self-imposed cultural boycott.

Bag Factory, 10 Minnaar Street, Newtown
Tel/fax: (011) 834 9181
Email: bagfactory@acenet.co.za
Hours: Sun - Wed 12 - 6pm

SUBMIT Review

LISTINGS REVIEWS NEWS ARTBIO WEBSITES PROJECT EXCHANGE FEEDBACK ARCHIVE SUBSCRIBE