Archive: Issue No. 82, June 2004

"...Invented histories, invented biologies, invented cultural affinities come with every identity..." - Kwame Antony Appi

It is both exciting and interesting to see video installation once again taking centre stage in a contemporary space in Durban. 'Pale' is an exhibition by Carol-anne Gainer, a Durban-based artist. The work is her final Master's exhibition. Before I get excited about the show, let me confess my bias towards video installation, as I feel strongly that this needs more nurturing, particularly in the Durban art community.

The show includes both banal objects, such as electric switches and sockets, as well as hand-formed clay objects, cast in bronze. This technique is used to great effect in Ventilator.

Here, a dry wall emerges from the ground, or is maybe forced downwards. Soil surrounds it providing context, rendering it superficial and unreal. You are denied access to this structure, but making your way towards it you notice it's not just any structure, but the lower wall of a house. A bronze air vent emerges from the wall, looking strangely out of place. On closer inspection one notices that it is inverted, its strategic position lending it value. A very banal object is given status by being cast in bronze. This basic principle operates throughout the show.

Nearby, almost invisible white vinyl text on the wall reads - "Just like a white kaffir". It stands alone, silent and yet screaming for attention from the passive audience. The issue itself is very real - perhaps it's a post-apartheid term.

One wonders if the artist could have made such bold statements just a few years ago. The work situates the viewer in the arena of contemporary race discourse, particularly in relation to "representing whiteness". What do we understand about the discourse of race, particularly about "whiteness"? After all, the work is not about the word "kaffir" as such but a "white kaffir".

The attention the piece craves is denied by its near invisibility, yet the subject is not entirely taboo. The "kaffir" word keeps me from this work. It is ironic, but carries little significance so obscured. It would have benefited from a more prominent position, supported by other works. Here, it stands alone, disconnected.

For artists experimenting with video, a lot of ground needs to be covered, not only in terms of ideas, but also in how this medium is treated and shown, and even received. You are likely to leave the show filled with colour, with a sense of white nostalgia (for the artist's grandmother), and a sense of girly sexuality, where land, body and identity politics are in a standoff.

The uncompromising walls and floors of the gallery stubbornly lend balance to this exhibition. But, at the same time, one feels that it is too clean, too dry, in a sense forcing a relationship between the artworks. They all say more or less the same thing; everything makes the same noise. With the exception of the video installation Embedded in the multi-media room.

The video shows the artist urinating on the ground. The soil below is wet and then dries, the image fades and the action is repeated on a loop. Again the artist plays with something that would not meet with approval from her immediate society. The whole installation, including a clinical, institutional sort of bed, sits in a low-walled box of soil. Red cotton threads run from a metal fame above to the center of the bed. This represents a sort of invisible wetness. The work declares to the establishment: "I am pissing on you and you won't stop me!"

Personal interpretations of the body, home, objects of possession, memory (private and public) and identity are threads that run through the show. In the main gallery a video installation entitled Sleeping is immediate and personal, inviting you to listen and feel. In a state of complete vulnerability, one is open to the interior world of dreams.

The title of an adjacent work, Suckling, directs us to two things - the sucking of a thumb, and the notion of engaging in such activity to draw sustenance through the mouth. The artist is simply suck(l)ing her thumb. It is deep, sensual, private and satisfying. The image is astonishing; the sound of the sucking is comprehensively disturbing. Suckling dominates the space, as its position forces the audience to interact.

Enlarged digital scans of banal objects are found in parts of the installation. A doll's eye, wallpaper patterns, a fake bird and a rhino tooth, amongst other images, make up the work Crop. Each is huge and imposing and collectively they evade clear categorisation, being high resolution scans rather than photographs.

'Pale' opens up a discourse around the issue of 'white representation', asking the audience to re-assess their expectations. Boundaries set by the so-called European tradition are tackled in each piece on this show. I only wish Gainer were more vigorous in her interrogation of these 'social expectations'.

Opens: April 28
Closes: May 16