'A Legacy of Men' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
by Anthea Buys
I find social commentary in art a very tricky phenomenon. How one should go about simply looking at a work, let alone evaluating it, is infinitely complicated by the imposition of a little moral didacticism. 'A Legacy of Men', a group exhibition curated by Jacki McInnes, is positively enthralling, but, or possibly because, it subscribes to this difficulty.
McInnes conceived of the exhibition as a forum for a male voice in the arts on the problem of violence against women and children in South Africa. Conventionally, activism in this department comes from women, and there are countless woman artists, internationally and locally, who have at some point taken up this cause in their work. In a current exhibition at the University of Johannesburg Gallery titled 'Look At Me', Diane Victor, Bernie Searle and friends do just this, with a print-and-poetry diatribe against the mistreatment of children. Of course, this cannot be but a noble thing to do. But, McInnes suggests as a main premise for 'A Legacy of Men', the public sadly aren't all that interested in seeing or hearing women fume about domestic violence anymore. The market is saturated, so to speak.
To address this dilemma, all seven participants here are men. The show opened to a crowd consisting predominantly of artists, their friends and family, students, a smattering of media people possibly coerced there by Mail&Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee, who gave a brilliant opening address, and one or two interested souls there without any other agenda. This marked the beginning of the international '16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children' campaign.
I don't particularly agree with McInnes that 'we have become desensitised' to violence against women and children in South Africa. First of all, this 'we' is far too nebulous an entity and, if it does exist, there are many who do not consider themselves part of it. Moreover, to suggest that woman-focused activism has lacked efficacy in recent years due simply to public apathy is a very strong claim. Perhaps what is a more sensitive appraisal of the situation, and which the show in fact begins to address, is that a male audience has been largely untargeted, or at least targeted very unstrategically, in South Africa. Because the vast majority of domestic violence is inflicted by male perpetrators in the South African context, some male representation in activism is sorely needed.
Participating here are Pierre Fouché, Robert Hamblin, Lawrence Lemaoana, Nicholas Hlobo, Mikhael Subotzky, Johan Thom and Kemang wa Lehulere. Subotzky's series of photographs entitled Beaufort West is perhaps the most traditionally 'accessible' work in the show, after which things take a turn for the conceptual. Subotzky has photographed four scenes in Beaufort West that implicitly associate domestic violence with localised poverty and patriarchy. One especially chilling image shows a young girl, probably no older than four, with the injunction, 'fuck me', scrawled on her forehead. Another depicts a young woman, possibly a teenager, arched over the bonnet of a car by a man whose identity is indiscernible. Her shirt is pulled up to her collar bone, revealing her breasts, as she looks reluctantly and tiredly at the faceless instigator.
Subotzky's representations of these sexualised scenes identify women, quite straightforwardly, as victims of a discrimination spawned of general social malaise. Fouché and Hamblin, on the other hand, consider what role socialisation plays in cultivating male-perpetrated domestic violence. Fouché's Portrait of Marie Fouché is an assemblage made using Letra-Set strips based on a snapshot of his mother from the 1960s. This work subtly questions a prevalent assumption that women are precluded from abusive roles in the family, and also suggests that women, mothers in particular, contribute to societal pressure on men to satisfy a certain index of masculinity.
Hamblin's Fatherland is an installation that features a simple stop-frame animation of himself with a sjambok in hand. The image then morphs into one of a woman holding the sjambok in a similar way. Alongside this are two layered photographic assemblages showing the same photographs super-imposed, and a number of poems and textual fragments that narrate somewhat casually, harrowing scenes of abuse.
Hamblin opposes the notion that men's hormonal and physical make up predisposes them to, or exonerates, their violent actions. Similarly to Fouché, he suggests that society nurtures women to resist violent action, while men are encouraged to indulge physical impulses. In the educational supplement to the exhibition, Hamblin, who is openly transsexual, recalls a time when, as a woman, he threatened violence, but was able to refrain because of his having been socialised as woman: 'I remember standing over a woman once, a sjambok in my hand. She was drunk, lying on my bathroom floor. She worked for me. I did not intend to hurt her. I just wanted to scare her. I understood the power dynamic too well. That was long ago. I was a woman then and certain that violence was a complete choice... I now live life as a male. My hormone levels match those of genetic men... even though my body seems to dictate a new set of responses, I cannot escape the fact that I remain a human who was socialised as a woman. My socialisation tempers my nature.'
Kemang Wa Lehulere and Lawrence Lemaoana's contributions to the exhibition look at domestic violence in South Africa as an ethnically codified tendency. Lehulere's video work Lefu LaNtate uses the metaphor of a single cigarette burning down, accompanied by a traditional song praising the 'spiritual' superiority of women, to suggest a discrepancy in how women are revered hypothetically and treated in reality.
Lemaoana's 100% Zulu Boy, a pair of photographic collages, takes a swipe at Jacob Zuma's infamously misogynistic responses to his accuser and the public during his rape trial, statements that conveyed an assumption of sexual entitlement based on his being a Zulu man. Lemaoana also parodies constructions of South African masculinity enshrined through the dominance of rugby as a national sport. Each of Lemaoana's images depicts a masked rugby team dressed literally from top to toe in bright pink, clutching their crotches. The team surrounds the central figure, which in one image is Jacob Zuma, and in the other, a Zuma supporter sporting JZ's mug on his T-shirt.
These works seem to approach a critical particularity that is uniquely relevant to the problem of domestic violence in South Africa. That is not to suggest that more general and abstract critiques of the issue are not valuable, however. Perhaps what complicates this matter of local pertinence, since 'A Legacy of Men' does purport to be locally engaged, is a question of utility. This brings me back to my initial reservation about this exhibition.
A morally outspoken project such as this one treads a precarious line between providing viewers with a contemplative space or provoking them to act (or refrain from acting) in a certain way. Furthermore, what is the value of a contemplative space, in matters of ethical import, if it does not somehow influence ethical behaviour? 'A Legacy of Men' raises these questions, perhaps unintentionally, and doesn't go very far to resolve them. This is not necessarily to the discredit of the show, but I can't help but think that with the exhibition curated and pitched to the viewing public as it was, it might have been shown in more public spaces in addition to a downstairs corner at JAG.
Anthea Buys is an arts writer for theMail&Guardian
Opens: November 25
Closes: January 18 2008
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