There is, however, a more complex subtext that emerges in a few of the works in the JAG exhibition and even extends beyond the spaces of the exhibition and into the panel discussions and other events that have surrounded the project. The first clue that something else is going on here is the title of Zen Marie’s embassy for a fictitious country, Republic of an Us (read ‘anus’). When I asked Malcomess about Marie’s use of the indefinite article, she offered that it was to highlight the existence of a multiplicity of 'us-es' of which this fake republic represents just one. Fair enough. But, to give Marie’s intelligence the benefit of the doubt, it still reads as 'anus' to even the most amateurish linguist. I would call it a joke. It may not be a good one, but nonetheless, it marks a break with the assumed neutrality of the curatorial props used in a museum exhibition – in this case, the naming and textual labelling of a work.
'Us' enacts the very kind of constructedness it sets out to highlight. It relishes the artifice of the curatorial moment and builds a fiction using terms of reference typically associated with the truth: ‘identity’, ‘exclusion’, ‘politics’, ‘territories’. The idea, stated explicitly at the entrance to the exhibition, that the categories we use to define ourselves are ‘empty placeholders’ is extended to the artworks themselves. They become empty placeholders, signs without ‘substance’.
In varying degrees of subtlety, many of the works on the exhibition have forged their origins, or highlight an act of doubling or surrogacy. Dorothee Kreutzfeldt’s collaborative portrait Twin, for example, which depicts the face that appears on Dark 'n Lovely hair product advertisements, was commissioned by Kreutzfeltd from Ozor-Ejike Ezefuna, a sign-writer working in downtown Johannesburg. Kreutzfeldt had the portrait executed by proxy, adding one or two finishing touches once it was done. This undermines the possibility of authorial transparency, something far more dearly held onto in art than in literature, and allows the work to float in the realm of fiction. The authorial ‘voice’ is staged and separated from the person of the artist, in the same way that in the novels of, say, J.M. Coetzee, J.M Coetzee the author character might be thought of as a different person to J.M. Coetzee who sits at his writing desk, both of whom are different people to John Coetzee the protagonist.
Justin Brett’s Devotion highlights the forged origins of the Johannesburg Art Gallery itself. Facing a window onto an old art deco fountain at the lower level of the gallery, the work is an exercise in architectural fakery. A simulation of a partially-demolished public baths complex, which looks eerily like an apocalyptic white cube gallery environment, it draws attention to the incongruity of the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s two architectural styles. Both the neo-classical-cum-art-deco halls of the old gallery and the white cube appended to it years later point to a broader history of cultural imperialism in Johannesburg that was entwined with and to some extent gave rise to apartheid urbanism (which, it must be added, lay the groundwork for more recent disputes over the ‘accessibility’ of the JAG).
The crux of the exhibition, as regards fakery, is Gimberg Nerf’s Truth Well Told, described by Malcomess as 'the biggest lie on the show'. This work is a retrograde museum display case filled with nautical paraphernalia, the archive of Douglas Giumberg and Christian Nerf’s Escape to Robben Island, a journey by rowboat that that may or may not have taken place. This possibly fictional archive is, at one level, a metaphor for the rest of the exhibition, but also, for the institutional structures that make exhibition-making as we know it possible. As part of the work, Gimberg Nerf made Malcomess and Njami each a wooden finger-crossing ring that forces the wearer to cross his or her index and middle fingers in a colloquial gesture of deceit. Apparently you can get one of your own if you’re 'a good liar'. The implication of this work is that the curators of this exhibition may well have orchestrated the entire project with their fingers crossed, metaphorically speaking. To put it plainly, 'Us' is a collection of lies, veiled to all but those who take the time to look at it properly.
So some of us have been duped. Others of us (like me) have been accused of propagating conspiracy theory. Where is the value in Malcomess and Njami’s exercise? Firstly, by analogy, the show points out that collective identity is a myth, that the criteria by which we build our ‘us’s and ‘them’s are at best unreliable, but probably fabricated. Secondly, it exposes the peculiar power relations between curators, artists and the audience and the complicated, and often controversial, social dynamics of group shows (I had the sense that not all the artists in the show were as ‘in on the joke’ as Gimberg Nerf, for instance). Most valuably as a curatorial project, 'Us' highlights the extent to which the accent of mainstream exhibition-making in South Africa (another sort of ‘us’) has funnelled the way one expects to read an art display.
