Archive: Issue No. 60, August 2002

01.08.02 Jane Alexander at DaimlerChrysler, Berlin
01.08.02 'Tracing the Rainbow' at the Kunst:Raum Sylt-Quelle, Germany
01.07.02 'Break the Silence' HIV/AIDS Portfolio in Barcelona and Geneva
01.06.02 South African artists at Documenta11 in Kassel, Germany

19.08.02 Media art in Mexico City

The DaimlerChrysler 2001 Award show of sculptor Jane Alexander opened at DaimlerChrysler Contemporary in Berlin on July 26, moving from its first German showing in Stuttgart. Alexander is internationally recognised as one of the most talented and powerful sculptors ever to come out of South Africa, and this exhibition provides audiences with the opportunity of viewing the 'African Adventure' series which the artist has been working on since 1999.

In the installation piece, Alexander plots out what one takes to be her vision of South Africa in the process of transformation, and whether you find this bleak and threatening in the isolation of her characters, or challenging in the suggestion of quirky cross cultural possibilities and making-do will probably depend on your view of the state of the country. Here are the figures from past Alexander scenarios, changing and regrouping for a new engagement. The frozen male figure, with fixed gaze, here has cords tied round his waist supporting all manner of old farming implements and toy metal trucks. Hovering in one corner of the earth arena is the neatly suited Japanese businessman, symbol of globalisation, ever alert for a new investment possibility. The trickster hyena/dog character has a springbok skin thrown over his back, and far from following on behind his master, has turned away from him. Girl with gold and diamonds with her golden-horned mask and arms without hands is little sister to the battered Oh Yes Girl of 1995. Strange but familiar hybrid bird and animal figures complete the tableau.

It is interesting to consider that in this art world era where a majority of international artists depend ever more heavily on the digital image, two of the most successful South African artists are Alexander and William Kentridge, both of whom in her and his own way use traditional drawing and sculpting skills to draw on South African archetypes in writing scenarios which give poetic depth to the contemporary history of this nation.

Videos and photographs complete Alexander's DaimlerChrysler exhibition, and the accompanying catalogue, documenting as it does all Alexander's most important works, is an important addition to the growing body of work on South African art. The show moves to the Pretoria Art Museum in November, and from there to Oliewenhuis in Bloemfontein and the SANG in Cape Town.

A monograph on Alexander has been published by HatjeCantz Verlag, Ostfildern, as part of the award.

Opening: July 26
Closing: September 15

DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin

This summer, a festival of South African art and culture is taking take place in the most northern exhibition point in Germany - the North Sea island of Sylt, organised by the director of the Kunst:Raum Sylt-Quelle Indra Wussow and the art historian Dr. Ralf Seippel, developer of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Art and Culture.

Kicking off with a jazz concert with vocalist Tutu Puoane of Cape Town on July 25, the opening of a group exhibition entitled 'Tracing the Rainbow' took place the following day. Participating artists are:
Zwelethu Mthethwa, Jane Alexander, David Koloane, Claudette Schreuders, Kay Hassan, Berni Searle, Andrew Tshabangu, Mbongeni Buthelezi, Sam Nhlengethwa, Pat Mautloa. A verylarge catalogue is available, and can already be seen in the art section of the Cape Town City Library.

Also part of the festival were readings with South African writers and poets as well as discussion s about the cultural and political situation of South Africa after Apartheid run by Dr. Sabine Vogel who curated the group show 'Colours' in Berlin 1995.

Opening: June 7
Closing: August 26

Kunst:Raum Sylt-Quelle, Hafenstrasse 1, 25980 Rantum/Sylt, Germany
Email: info@kultur-quelle.de
Hours: Open daily 10am - 8pm

Durban-based organisation Artists for Human Rights (AHR) has scored two more hot exhibition sites for its HIV/AIDS portfolio 'Break the Silence' - one at the Barcelona AIDS 2002 conference and the other at the Palais des Nations, UN, Geneva.

Based on its HIV/AIDS awareness campaign utilising billboards of artists' images placed in cities and townships across South Africa, the portfolio exhibits the original artists' prints from which the billboards are derived. The portfolio engages with HIV/AIDS in a variety of ways to convey its message at times utilising a didactic stance at others a more openly read symbolic one. Each original artwork is determined more by the individual artist than by a prescriptive formula and it is this diversity of approach that gives the portfolio its interest.

The Geneva exhibition is a joint venture between AHR, the SA embassy in Bern and the UN Geneva. The exhibition will be opened by Ambassador January-Bardill and the Director-General Mr. Ordzhonikidze, UN. Jan Jordaan, project leader for AHR, will also contribute an address. The opening will conclude with the handing over of the portfolio to the UN by the South African Ambassador on behalf of AHR.

Barcelona AIDS 2002 Conference
Opening: July 6
Closing: July 12

Palais des Nation, UN, Geneva
Opening: July 9
Closing: August 2

Under the directorship of Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor, the Documenta11 exhibition has been long anticipated, with four preceding "platforms" of lectures and discussions taking place over the course of the past year. The list of 116 participating artists was announced at the beginning of May (see story). The broad theme or dominant issue of this edition is globalisation and the relationship between centre and periphery, so it is more than appropriate that a healthy number of Africans are included on the list. Among them are four South Africans: William Kentridge (who was also on Documenta X), Kendell Geers, and photographers David Goldblatt and Santu Mofokeng.

Kentridge's new multimedia production, Confessions of Zeno (which will have its South African premiere at the Grahamstown festival), was staged at the Staatstheater Kassel on June 8 and 9. Combining puppetry, song, theatrical acting, a string quartet and video, the production is a collaboration between Kentridge, the Handspring Puppet Company, composer Kevin Volans and writer Jane Taylor.

Geers (see also) is showing existing works selected by Enwezor: Suburbia (1999), a series of 33 photographs showing South African properties adorned with security signs; and Shooting Gallery, a slide installation in which a shooting scene from The Godfather is projected to the repeated click of the slide carousel.

Opening: June 8
Closing: September 15

Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel, Germany
Tel: +49 561 70 72 70
Email: info@documenta.de
Website: www.documenta.de

The International Festival of Video Art - Vidarte 2002 - will take place at the Palacio Postal, the Postal Palace, in historic downtown Mexico City from August 27 to September 7. The festival was started in 1990, with the aim of dissolving the geographic frontiers and enhancing the relationship between Mexican and foreign artists, and has become one of the most popular cultural events in the city.

This year, the festival pays tribute to Bill Viola, the renowned American video artists, who will give a master conference and a retrospecive of his single channel videos.

One of the curators of the festival is American based curator Olu Oguibe, who has invited Cape Town artist Sue Williamson to send the CDRom projection Can't forget, can't remember, made in collaboration with Tracy Gander and Arnold Erasmus. Currently showing at the South African National Gallery, the piece examines two cases which came before the TRC. (See Project)