'Amajita in Conversation'
by Ed Young
'There are no women on this exhibition because amajita is a man', pronounces our snappy curator, 'and there are no white people because white people do not live in townships.' This response was provided by Thembinkosi Goniwe, pre-empting the usual public interrogation about the race and gender issues regarding the exhibition in question. When putting together this yBa (young Black artists) show, Goniwe had a very specific strategy in mind.
He did so from his laptop, upstate New York. He was not really concerned with the work that these artists were to produce, but rather setting up a quality conversation between these artists and himself; a sort of a shebeen discussion. It seems to have paid off.
'Amajita In Conversation' is an exhibition featuring fairly established and young artists such as Garth Erasmus, Randolph Hartzenberg, Sipho Hlati, Roderick Sauls, Pro Sobopha, Vuyile Voyiya as well as newcomer Kemang Wa-Lehulere. How does a whitey critique this exhibition? I live in the city, I am perfectly shielded by friends when frequenting township shebeens and I sure as fuck do not know the secret handshake. My criticism has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this criticism now.
Amajita is a man. He is a nice guy, a tsotsi, an ou, as well as an arrogant charismatic misogynist thug. They are the amagents. But, when gazing down at this group of artists sitting in the panel discussion hosted by Michaelis, they seemed timid and pretty pleased with themselves. I would be too. The show was generally good.
While being intrigued by the invitation image, I was expecting a fairly stale exhibition produced by the usual suspects from the yBa crowd. I was foreseeing the typical skin paintings by Sobopha, yet another boring stamp print by Sipho Hlati, and the fairly uninteresting B&W linocut from Voyiya. Although I understand that these works have a firm place in the art world, they bore me and I feel that these mostly hide behind cultural issues, rather than understanding how these issues could be raised within the realm of contemporary art. My own prejudice had led me to believe that Goniwe had merely asked his buddies to put on some of their work. He did, and I was mildly surprised.
The work on show was by and large impressive, and managed to re-locate itself from the staleness mentioned above. Due to length restrictions I will not go into specific details, but wish to focus on some of the highlights of the exhibition.
The young and little known Kemang Wa-Lehulere produced the most memorable piece. Lefu La Ntate is a minimal video projection. Shown on the projection is a lonely burning cigarette turned upright to stand on the butt. With the speed of the video slightly increased the viewer is exposed to the cigarette burning at a more than usual pace and one is constantly aware of this action. As opposed to many one-liner projections of this kind, one feels the urge to actually watch the whole thing, to see it burn to the end. Wa-Lehulere later revealed that this piece was a reference to amajita's 'loose fags' (cigarettes); the way women are perceived in these circles: smoke it and toss it. At this point it is interesting to note that Wa-Lehulere has no formal art training, except maybe from his peers, and that the rest of the exhibition's participants are all proud owners of some sort of post-graduate degree.
Another highlight was Sipho Hlati's Abelungu Badala. The work, in part, consisted of a shebeen table with the residue of a couple of hours of hard work: an impressive amount of empty quart bottles. The table surface consisted of images and text that Hlati encountered over the past few years. Visually it was an obvious reference to Pippa Skotnes' Miscast exhibition some many moons ago at which the audience was forced to walk over photocopied portraits of Khoisan people. By many accounts Skotnes has not yet fully recovered from the criticism that she received from the show.
One of these quotes read something along the lines of curator Emma Bedford phoning up Hlati and asking him to bring all his friends to an exhibition opening at the South African National Gallery, mentioning there would be lots of food. This was apparently for the 'Voiceovers' exhibition at SANG in 2005. The implication is that Bedford was desperate to have some black faces at the opening as Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr. Pallo Jordan, was to open the show. Alongside the text, Hlati also drew a little caricature of himself, hands-on-hips and a speech bubble reading: 'But Emma, all my friends are white'. Apart from being a bit witty the piece was also quite pretty.
Pro Sobopha's Pro-Files installation was visually interesting and hard-hitting, although literal. It consisted of a display of deconstructed police uniforms. But perhaps the power of this work lies in the viewer's knowledge that Sobopha himself was a victim of police brutality in 2003. He was hospitalized with broken ribs and a collapsed lung a day or two before the opening of his solo exhibition at the AVA. He did not attend the opening. Although the display of uniforms seem good enough, the silhouetted fallen figure on the floor and hazard tape seems unnecessary and a tad too much.
I felt a bit disappointed that artists such as Garth Erasmus, and Randy Hartzenberg did not really step out of their usual box. By the sounds of it, Goniwe wanted to push the artists a bit further. I was also a bit irritated by the installation of Roderick Sauls' Ekke is Wys - The good the bad and the coloured. The projector was installed the wrong way around and the keystone correction freaked me out. Tip for future: In case of ceiling mount, the projector has to be upside down. I am no perfectionist, but am of the firm belief that the installation is as much part of the work as the work itself.
Some of the more playful elements of the exhibition were evident in Vuyile Voyiya's To (G)art(H) or Not. This video work was merely documentation of Garth Erasmus performing his candle drawings at Greatmore Studios. Voyiya agreed to film it. Erasmus was not aware that Voyiya was to present this on the exhibition and saw it there for the first time, hence the title of the piece.
The exhibition might have kicked ass. But I do not think the curator and artists should be congratulated too much or too soon. And did it kick ass?
I urge these artists to continue and develop this kind of production, although I do understand that we all need to sell some work to make money. One can survive without having to make saleable work and less saleable work eventually become far more valuable and memorable.
It's just a bit difficult.
I once asked artist Steve McQueen about this survival issue. He calmly responded. 'Go work at McDonalds'.
