Gallerists, to a large extent, sell a branded product at these fairs. And by this I do not mean that they are selling the brand of a particular artist, although that too is often true. What I mean is that they are selling a vision of a country. In a sense they represent a country, but they are also selling a representation of a country, with all that this implies.
At the White Cube booth the vision being sold was a fairly simple one: up for sale were the works of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and Gilbert & George. That is to say, Jay Jopling et al deal in a vision of Britain, one forged by Charles Saatchi, the YBAs and Blairite ‘Cool Britannia’. Clearly the White Cube is trying to cash in before the new aesthetic of the ‘austerity generation’ gains traction.
The Goodman Gallery’s product was in some ways quite similar, in that it was selling a certain representation of a country. The Goodman as an entity was in fact fairly explicit in this, going as far as to title its selection of work ‘Security’. True to this theme, while I was standing in the space, one of the gallery assistants began talking to a potential buyer about the problems of crime and violence in South Africa.
As their media release stated, the gallery’s vision focused on the effects of violence, crime and the resulting ‘white paranoia’. It explicitly stated that these were the concerns of Kendell Geers’s work Suburbia from 1999 with its images of security company signs and the ubiquitous razor wire that once adorned the parapets of the rich. On the wall at right angles to Geers’s work was Mikhael Subotzky’s small video installation of found CCTV footage showing the violence and brutality that pervades South African life. It shows uncensored images of people beaten and brutalized by criminals, the police’s overzealous reactions, and car hijackers weaving between Johannesburg’s traffic jams searching for unsuspecting victims, of all races.
There is no doubt that Subotzky’s work represents a contemporary vision of South Africa. There is no hiding from the fact that the ready availability of this order of footage clearly shows we live in a crime-ridden, brutal and dysfunctional panoptical society, one that is fundamentally different to much of Western Europe. With this piece Subotzky brings to life the reality of the quotidian in urban streets that affects all races and classes. Also shown across the space from Subotzky’s work was Willem Boshoff’s Dubul'ibhunu (i.e. ‘Shoot the Boer’). With its wooden shards seemingly slicing into the names of murdered whites, it is an overt statement that there is much that is rotten in South African society.
But one gets the feeling that there maybe something disingenuous about this one-sided artistic vision of contemporary South Africa when one considers Geers’s two other pieces at the fair. Blade Runner is a piece made in 2010 of razor wire bent and twisted into metal frames. It seems to critique both the culture of obsessive security consciousness while also making a statement about the ‘psychology’ of the country itself. As the press release points out, South Africa is a country that has the dubious fame of having invented razor wire. The implication is that razor wire is somehow a symbol of the violence, hatred and paranoia that is inherent in our country. But what does not seem true is that it is an aesthetic of the present South Africa. Razor wire’s days as an object of potent aggression and paranoia are over. It now lies impotently over defunct industrial estates and helplessly covers huge swathes of our porous borders, rusting in the sections that haven’t been cut away by refugees (and the artist Dan Halter). As a symbol of anything that pertains to this country’s current zeitgeist, it seems as outdated as that of the hammer and sickle.
Of course it is not surprising that Geers still uses razor wire in his works: he has not lived in the country for many years now, and his work seems often to be influenced by what he remembers about the country rather than what is contemporaneous. This was never more present than in Geers’s installation of bricks suspended on nylon ropes at the space Art Unlimited and the accompanying essay he provided with it. By his own admission, Hanging Piece was conceived eighteen years ago. The work, punning a now almost forgotten memory, is a reference to the turbulent times when peace in South Africa really did hang in the balance. As an installation it certainly drew a lot of attention and, riding the wave of the ‘Arab Spring’, the brick as crude weapon symbolic of a grassroots push for freedom is still as relevant now as it was in apartheid South Africa. Geers’s extensive essay explaining the work suggests that there is connotation, allusion and symbolism contained within a brick but, much like his Blade Runner, its significance seems a little confused. Perhaps some of the confusion lies in the forms of the new, undamaged bricks - they seem to display nothing of the violence and danger that Geers claims they do in the pamphlet.
What is also peculiar is why Geers felt it necessary to produce the pamphlet in the first place. On the one hand it is the memoir and statement of an activist. On the other it displays either a certain artistic insecurity, or evinces an artist who wishes to take sole authorship of the interpretation. What is more, Geers also goes on to make some irregular assertions. He states that much of the inspiration behind this work derives from the freedom fighters who suspended bricks from bridges during the struggle against apartheid. These bricks would then smash into and kill unsuspecting white holidaymakers on their way to the ‘white sand’ beaches of Durban. Not only does it seem peculiar that Geers remembers Durban’s beach sand as white - although this may have been done for impact for an international audience - but also that he glorifies these acts. It was never official ANC policy in the struggle to target innocent civilians and Mandela was at pains to distance himself and the ANC from such practices.
Although one feels that the essay is meant to be the cry of an activist it certainly seems to come across, if only to a South African, as right at the heart of what part of South Africa is on sale at Basel: a vision of violence. Of course violence is as much a part of South African society as the braai, but the sledgehammer blows delivered by Geers, Subotzky and Boshoff are oversimplifying and don’t seem to critique what is the root and cause of the country’s violent nature. There seems to be little sophistication or subtlety to them, to the point that one questions exactly how much engagement these artists have with the themes they are dealing with in those works.
This was not entirely true of the offering by Stevenson at Art Unlimited, and specifically the work of Zanele Muholi. Like Geers, Muholi occupies dual positions as both artist and activist. Her ‘Faces and Phases’ series viewed from a distance seemed like a conservative choice for Art Unlimited, where the majority of galleries opted for more conceptual installations. Once in the space, however, the impact of Muholi’s work became more visceral. Standing amongst her portraits one became aware of each individual’s eyes fixed on the centre of the space. Muholi, again, is not an artist who deals in nuance - activism seldom does - and at times, perhaps, her subject’s gestures and facial expressions are a little overstated. Yet, to be sure, Muholi successfully renders the anger, helplessness, strength and bravery of the subculture of black lesbian women in South Africa. After standing there for a while one almost feels the words of Martin Luther: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’.
The impact of Muholi’s work, although again in some ways an image of a dystopian society, is nevertheless a work of an artist engaged with what is most important to her. It is not merely an art curio of violence for sale, but it derives its own subtleties and feelings from the strangely heterogeneous reproduction of individual figures and its strength, one feels, arises out of something intimately known to the artist herself.
Overall, however, it remains disturbing that the vision of South Africa on sale at Basel was a very one-sided affair. Of course this, in many ways, results from the role of the artist in South African art history and the often genuine feelings of responsibility of those witnesses of violence and injustice to give evidence. This contribution to the art world is undoubtedly valid and relevant. However, this is surely only one vision and it can, at times, show our art to be rather too one-dimensional.
This narrowness of representation does possibly make sales easier. But it also bricks our artists into a corner, forcing them to keep producing in a certain mode, and limiting broader artistic exploration. And any viewer paying close attention inevitably begins to question how sincere the engagements with these themes of violence and disorder are, and to what extent they are employed as marketing tactics.
M Blackman is a Cape Town-based writer.
