'Works on Paper'

The giant painting on paper, Moulinsart Lawyers in the Congo (2009), depicts postcolonial white lawyers pestering the Congolese ‘savages’ over their copyright infringements of Tintin. In colonial times the weapons of the colonisers were brutish—shotguns and knives. In postcolonial times the weapons are more refined—paternalistic moralising and the law. In both cases, the Europeans are utterly dismissive of native African people.

For the most part, Kannemeyer’s works do not have much interpretive depth, but this is not to their detriment because it permits them to have a refreshing lightness. Many of the pieces are one-liners; but these one-liners are very insightful and are cleverly executed. He illuminates nuances of postcolonial society which we had possibly not previously considered, and he presents them in an accessible way and from an original angle. For example, the piece W is for White (2008) consists of lexical definitions for the word white beneath an image of a beamish middle-aged white male. The definitions for white include, ‘innocent’, ‘pure’, ‘honourable’, and so on.  The message is simply that the white writers of the dictionary esteem themselves, as whites. This is especially obvious when the piece is compared to B is for Black (2008), where the definitions of black are pejorative ones, such as ‘dirty’ and ‘sullen’. Kannemeyer’s audience is not intended to be art critics, who have the remarkable ability to interpret a convoluted postcolonial discourse onto a stop sign. He aims to speak to an informed public; for them to understand him and thereby for them to understand themselves.

In order to grasp the conceptual element in many of these works, we are required to have some understanding of both the history of colonialism and the social state of a postcolonial society as well as a few relatively obscure references. Despite this, even if we do not fully understand the conceptual aspect of the works, they still have something to deliver. They have a delightful quirkiness in the exaggerated characters, stylised representation and the playful, though edgy, text which comprises many of the pieces. The images themselves are well composed and bold. The details in the illustrations invite us to explore the images and to savour their intricacies. 

Kannemeyer’s interests run broader than the socio-political. The exhibition also includes some prints of commentated pornographic etchings that deal with issues regarding sex and the relationships between individuals. These show the same astuteness as the more political works. Our Parents are Addicted to Lies (2004) is captioned as it is titled and explicitly represents a girl riding a large phallus. She turns to the viewer then turns away and continues to enjoy her situation. With his usual finesse, Kannemeyer takes a subtlety of the state of being human and presents it to us to contemplate: in this case it is the phenomenon of parents denying the facts of their children’s sexuality.

Representing the subtleties of the human condition is what Kannemeyer does best. The exhibition includes a small series of portraits of literary figures, such as Lewis Carol and George Sand. These portraits do well what a portrait is meant to do: represent a particular person with consideration of their character, and with extra points given for expressing a nuance of that character. Kannemeyer does the same when the portrait is of a society, of a culture, of a period in history or of a point in time; and he surely earns those extra points.