Lines of Attitude at the District 6 Homecoming Centre
by Linda Stupart
Everyone who leaves central Cape Town on De Waal Drive has been faced with a new very big and very public artwork on the side of one of the apartment blocks in what used to be District 6. The piece, of a highly stylised African woman in a sea of architecture that once existed on the spot where she now stands, holding a television on her head and staring dubiously at two children/worshippers in her hand, was painted over a few days by five graffiti artists: Faith47 and Falko (both South African graffiti legends), Dreph and Mode2 from the UK and Phiks from Kenya. The exhibition 'Lines of Attitude: Crossing Continents with Street Art' at the District 6 Homecoming Centre runs in conjunction with the establishment of this mural, as well as demonstrations and workshops around District 6.
The first notion of interest for me is that of a graffiti exhibition funded by the British Council in which the artists are all at the opening shaking hands and trying to flog their prints and multiples. In an exhibition that aims to look at street art's potential to evoke social change in various societies, what has happened to the young rebel with his/her spraycan running around the train tracks late at night? Though the artists stress that part of the exhibition's intention is to change the view that graffiti is necessarily vandalism, and to assert that it can lead to positive cultural development, it is often the vandal and the outsider who is most able to make real social comment and initiate change.
Graffiti is more than a particular style of painting on a wall, it is about risk, territory and crumbling plaster - to see the artform sanitised to the extent that the artists are selling their prints and doing advertising campaigns for Mark Shuttleworth's Hip2BSquare campaign, sits a little uncomfortably with the more hardcore youth culturalist. That said, artists such as Falko and Faith47 have certainly done their time and the desire for income and an occasional rest is reasonable.
The theme of the artists' project is 'Media and Cultural Expression' and the iconic image on the side of University estate encapsulates their embodiment of past cultural history and their uncertain future as defined by popular media - particularly television. The woman, however is a particularly Euro-centric American-ised version of the noble African Woman, and though it is typical of Faith47's popular art deco style, may be a little indicative of the fact that their were no black women on the team.
At the 'Lines of Attitude' show, British artist Deph contributed a slick and wry radio briefcase sculpture which was supplemented by a television mobile - the latter a little less interesting. Deph's paintings, however were a great disappointment - underdeveloped expressionistic tendencies and more 'African women' pieces did little for an artist whose impressive and surprising figurative pieces find themselves gracing walls around the world. As in the case of many of the participants, the work just didn't translate into an interior space.
Faith47 exhibited digital prints that interpret the significance of some of her public pieces on shacks in Cape Town townships. The prints combined photography, illustration, digital manipulation and physical stitching to show her graffiti pieces superimposed with the newspaper headlines that inspired them, set very clearly in their physical environments.
Falko exhibited five works comprising characters painted on doors which had been covered in cheesy wallpaper, a medium that powerfully evokes the horrors of suburban living, and when 'vandalised' with Falco's spraycan, managed to succinctly express notions of public versus private space. The works such as I'm So Pretty, and No Shield, an image of a man with an mc Hammer haircut carrying an African spear in one hand and a ghetto blaster in the other, interrogate more than any other on the show, the intersection of graffiti, media and localised vs. global cultures.
Mode2's paintings of stylised African figures, though skilled, did very little to bring any kind of UK street art style, or even his own very powerful public fervour to the exhibition. However, Phiks' works in their very particular method and garish simplified colours brought some of the artist's experience painting fantastical images and texts on matatus (Kenyan taxis) to the show.
In essence this is a very talented and interesting group. Their collaborative efforts in Kenya and Cape Town were hugely successful and I would guess that their workshops were helpful to the community. This exhibition, however, does little to showcase the transformative and cultural power of street art which by its very definition is a public and site-specific endeavour. Though there are some interesting pieces on the show, it fails as an exhibition in what seems to be an unconsidered transplant of the artists from the street to an interior exhibition space.
Opens: March 16
Closes: April 6
