The curators would probably dispute this observation. Despite the exhibition's apparent incoherence, Mobweni and Goniwe identified two frames, one conceptual and one thematic, within which the exhibition can be read. The first is expressed in the title, ‘SPace: Currencies in Contemporary African Art’. According to Goniwe, the exhibition provides 'a creative and intellectual space for African artists, curators, writers and various audiences to engage in dialogue on culture, aesthetics, politics and mobility'. Here a spatial metaphor is used to describe the catalytic role Goniwe hoped 'SPace' would play in cultural discourse in and about Africa. At the same time, the way in which the exhibition orders the physical space it occupies and establishes an internal topography of meaning determines whether or not the desired abstract discursive space emerges. Curiously, the exhibition was characterised by a conspicuous absence of discursive prompts. Although explanatory and contextualising wall texts can bludgeon all the subtlety out of art, an exhibition ostensibly with discursive aims would have helped its audience along with at least a brief textual introduction to some of the ‘perceptions’ of Africa it was challenging, for instance.
Embedded within the word ‘SPace’ is the word ‘Pace’, and this is the point of the capitalised ‘P’ in the exhibition title. This wordplay connects space and time as dual facets of cultural experience. More controversially, the title suggests that there is something particular to the space-time of African art and contemporary culture; that it is animated with rhythms and energies that must, in some way, be locally specific. A general concern with temporal modes is not apparent in the exhibition alone; few time-based works were included, when compared with the vast majority of pictorial and sculptural works, a leaning which might have been mediated by a sustained visual rhythm or rhyme. Anyone not a member of the press or in attendance at the opening or two discussions held by the curators during the course of the exhibition might have been left to wonder at that clumsy capital ‘P’ in the title. Moreover, even if the movement of time had played a more central role in the curation of the exhibition, the implications of this in the context of a project meant to 'showcase' African contemporary art would be contentious. The primacy given to pace, or rhythm, in the title insinuates that there is a rhythmic sensibility particular to the whole of Africa - or, to reiterate a colonial stereotype, that rhythm is in Africa’s bones, that Africans have an innate sense of rhythm.
The second frame offered by Goniwe and Mboweni, the thematic one, was that ‘SPace’ offered an alternative to certain stereotypical perceptions of Africa. Although these stereotypical views are never clearly identified by the curators, they are implied antithetically in the themes which Goniwe and Mboweni do take up in ‘SPace’: beauty, pleasure and intimacy. These tacitly challenge a view that Africa is a continent of suffering and threat. Interestingly, both views shape the schizophrenic colonial story of Africa: the mysterious ‘dark continent’ is at once alienating and alluring, perilous and forthcoming with pleasures. As a resource not only for colonial economic growth, but also for colonial hedonism, the bodies of African colonial subjects, particularly women, were exploited just as the land was. In this light, Donkor’s Madonnas seem a strange inclusion. Each work in this series is a portrait of a woman posing in a bikini against a background of goldleaf, slave ships and rainbows. The works stage a critique of colonial exploitation of Africa, drawing analogy between the continent and a female body objectified by an anonymous, desirous gaze. But so much do they indulge in the representation of these bodies, which are mostly bodies of black women, that they seem merely to reiterate colonial objectification of African women. It is not clear where, or if, Donkor’s indulgence gives way to criticism. Also, if read through the themes of beauty, pleasure and intimacy, the Madonnas seem to represent at least beauty and pleasure as gendered qualities. Besides being sexist, this slant has problematic implications for the application of these themes to the idea of Africa.
Gabrielle Goliath’s Portrait of a Woman (2010), offers some respite. In this photography-based installation, Goliath displays extreme close-up photographs of parts of a body as floor panels marked with footprints. The footprints invite viewers to walk on the panels, which makes them culpable in a make-believe scenario of figuratively trampling the woman whose portrait this is. The dismembering quality of the separated photographs, the anonymity of the woman singled out in the title, and the involvement of the viewer in an act of metaphorical violence, are brutally engaging. They disallow the passive indulgence in beauty and pleasure which Donkor’s Madonnas invite, and facilitate a situation of intimacy which does not resolve in pleasure.
The dialogue between Goliath’s and Donkor’s works is a rare moment of sense in the exhibition, and the basis for the inclusion of several other works, James Muriuki’s untitled photographic series on the Kenya Meat Commission (2009) and Kudzanai Chiurai’s Dying to be Men series (2009) for example, is less clear. Muriuki’s series looks candidly at the treatment of cattle within Kenya’s meat industry. In this body of work, the representation of animal rights abuses is meant to lead the viewer to ponder human rights abuses in Africa. This agenda seems to contradict the themes of beauty, pleasure and intimacy which purportedly run through the exhibition. The same goes for Ciurai’s Dying to be Men, which, it must be said, is not concerned with anything quite as serious as animal rights. This series of photographic caricatures of African politicians represents Chiurai’s move to the Goodman Gallery, which coincided with a move away from painting and towards overproduced but fairly insubstantial photographs. Chiurai's caricatures look a great deal like Barthèlemy Toguo’s 2008 photographic series Stupid African President (incidentally, Toguo is also represented on 'SPace'), but lack their drama and poise. If Dying to be Men offers the viewer beauty or pleasure, it is only at the most superficial level, and because of this superficiality this body of work is, probably inadvertently, alienating.
Of course curatorial themes should not be used to evaluate an exhibition as if by a checklist. However, one would suppose that there would be more coalescence with these themes than there were in ‘SPace’, especially considering that the themes of beauty, pleasure and intimacy were identified after the selection of works was made (according to the curators). What was most troubling about ‘SPace’ was that its weaknesses and deficiencies could have been easily remedied with even a little curatorial care. It struck me as a carelessly, perhaps even cynically, conceived exhibition that could have been produced by a lesser curator, alone, for a fraction of the spend. The billboards and banners promised the world, but ultimately it seemed as though more effort had gone into ‘SPace’’s publicity campaign than into ‘SPace’ itself.
