Resistance Artists

RESISTANCE ARTISTS GAVIN JANTJES A South African Colouring Book One of his most renowned works, South African Colouring Book, integrates photographic images into a work of art intended as a tool of knowledge about South Africa’s Apartheid policies. Suite of eleven prints + cover combining imagery and text representing individuals and events associated with political oppression and racial injustice in South Africa. Images include scenes of protest, police violence against demonstrators, a funerary cortege, a beauty pageant, and depictions of manual work. One of the prints includes a page from the artist's passbook, with handwritten text below. Many of the prints include a color bar in bright pigments and an area of two parallel rows of five circles, some with the directions "colour these…" The works are exquisitely produced, demonstrating Jantjes' skills as a master printmaker and a compelling visual artist. The prints mix photographic images, drawing and both handwritten and typed texts with effective use of color to create works rich with pathos and irony in the exploration of racial classification, conflict and exploitation. A starting point for the work was Jantjes' own identity card and the artist's handwritten notations on the three main racial groups as identified in South Africa's Population Registration Act. In these powerful works, the artist plays with the irony of "color" to address the insidious means through which the regime "colored" the individuals within it. Many of the prints incorporate a color bar in bright pigments and circular registers complete with "colour these…" directions, a clear reference to apartheid era racial classifications. However, the work operates on a broader level, as the artist manipulates the innocent notion of school coloring books through juxtapositions of images and texts that underscore the systematic racism prevalent in South African educational and social institutions. "A South African Colouring Book" is a particularly well-known work by Gavin Jantjes. It was featured in a number of important exhibitions including "Art Contre Apartheid" at the Centre Pompidou Paris--an exhibition that traveled to six other venues worldwide; "Documenta 6" in Kassel, Germany; and most recently at P.S. 1 as part of the exhibition "The Short Century." WILLIE BESTER pg 131 – 136, you may only discuss his work before 1994. FORCED REMOVAL Forced Removals, 1988 As a part-time student at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town in 1988, the blatant attacks on the Apartheid system in the work of his fellow students, was an eye opener to him. The critical environment of the art school inspired him to produce two works, Forced Removals and Don’t Vote, which protested the injustices of the Group Areas Act and the racial composition of the apartheid voters’ roll. The medium that Bester chose to express these themes of protest was a collage of waste material and conventional artistic forms that has since become his hallmark. The success of these first explorations with “mixed-media collage” and in the physical and symbolic use of township waste, encouraged Bester to pursue his career as an artist. In Forced Removals, Bester depicts a scene common to many township and squatter camp residents during the Apartheid era: the forced removal of people from their makeshift or permanent homes at the hands of the government. The removals were usually sudden and violent, with police and soldiers entering the townships. This was often a very painful and emotional time for those families forced to leave their homes with only the possessions they could carry. Townships such as Sophiatown in Johannesburg and District Six in Cape Town are two examples of flourishing communities that were completely destroyed by the Apartheid government. Destruction of houses during forced removals in District Six Destruction of houses during forced removals in District Six Cape Town, South Africa, 1974 The focus of the composition is the bright yellow bulldozer in the process of destroying District Six, with callous disregard to the inhabitants feelings. The bulldozer in itself becomes a symbol of the brutality involved in the destruction of a once thriving community. Bester uses photographic cut-outs for the two people standing behind the bulldozer, which brings the reality of the situation home to the viewer. They appear to be in a state of shocked numbness. By using photographs of actual people Bester effectively brings home the message that forced removals wasn’t just some distant event in history that affected anonymous people, and personalize the suffering the inhabitants experienced. To the left, a man appears to attempting to salvage some possessions, and one gets the feeling that that the bulldozers did not even wait for the people to remove their possessions. Bester treated the rest of the painting as a realistic painting of township life and in doing so, the viewer feels even more poignantly that soon the bulldozer will destroy the colourful scene forever. The bulldozer becomes not just the focal point of the painting, but also a disturbing element in what would otherwise just be a depiction of a street scene. At the bottom right hand corner Bester enigmatically stenciled the words “Made in England,” giving a visual impression that it could be part of an old packing crate found on a rubbish dump. This use of stenciling is both reflective of the reality that the scene will soon just be rubble, a rubbish dump and perhaps also a comment on the economic system itself. Like Bester’s other works, Forced Removals may be read both across and below the surface, and he successfully combines the subject matter with a richly textured whole within the resonance of its symbolic content. HELEN SIBIDI pg 52 – 54 in chapter 5, pg 121 textbook. Tears of Africa 1988 One of her most famous works Tears of Africa, (1988) is a congested charcoal collage. Set in a crowded Garden of Eden, it portrays people seduced by life in the cities, resulting in broken family structures and shattered African identities. The destruction of cultural values indicated by the vigorous fragmentation of colour, face splitting, crayon scrawls and broad-brush strokes. detail Where is My Home? The Mischief of the Township Where Is My Home? The Mischief of the Township is another example of the cubist-expressionist nature of Sebidi’s work. Equally congested, the pastel and paper collage portrays the psychological trauma experienced after moving to urban centers from a rural environment, drawing attention to the political climate that created the social ills prevalent in the townships. The violence, disillusionment and over-crowdedness that had African people living like animals, removed from their cultural roots, history, traditions and thus identity. The child’s mother hold the sharp edge of the knife 1988 A woman is there to build a legacy, teach, protect and to nurture, in The Child’s Mother Holds The Sharp Side Of The Knife Sebidi depicts exactly that with the woman holding on to the chain to hold on to tradition, what she was told and the wisdom she holds within which she must pass on to her children(legacy). The crowed piece displays the township life only living in such a little space and make do with it. PAUL STOPFORTH The Interrogators, 1979 pg 117 textbook Paul Stopforth. The Interrogators Triptych. Graphite and floor wax. The Interrogators, features three of the 9 policemen involved in the inquest around Steve Biko's death. The ghostlike treatment of the centrally placed faces which dominate the artwork is unsettling, they seem to loom out of a mist and confront the viewer. The bottom face is especially sinister as he has a small Hitler-like moustache and sunglasses which hide his eyes the image of a chair brings all the figures together – they are all guilty of the same crimes. The chair which an inanimate object becomes a symbol of latent terror. A common means of torture was to strap victim to a chair. Elegy, 1980 The viewer is immediately struck by the cold grey body lying in a sea of blood red. It is laid out on what looks like a coroners tray. The body of the hero lies mute, he is powerless to resist the viewers gaze. A man that was an activist is now rendered helpless in death as he laid out like a cadaver on a butcher’s slab. Biko’s nakedness makes him appear vulnerable, his face is turned away from the viewer at an awkward angle. Detail JANE ALEXANDER, pg 122, 123, 125,126 – only discuss work before 1994 The Butcher boys, 1985-86. Context is important when viewing The Butcher Boys, especially considering the circumstances in which it was initially released. As Peffer writes, “During 1985 a state of emergency was declared in South Africa in response to renewed outbreaks of violent resistance, and was renewed yearly until 1990. The police were again given wide-ranging powers for the forceful suppression of popular protest, including the detention and interrogation of suspects without trial. Over thirty thousand people were detained between 1986 and 1987. During this period, Jane Alexander produced a sculptural group, The Butcher Boys (1985-86).” (Peffer 2009, p. 75) This climate of fear meant that South Africans could not be outspoken about or stand against conditions within the country. The Boys are mute – Alexander has created them without functioning mouths; it was not possible for South Africans to speak out against the oppressive government at the time, without fear of reprisal. With their ears removed, The Butcher Boys are incapable of hearing, suggesting that they’d be unable to hear pleas for mercy. The fact that their throats have been tampered with indicates that their vocal chords may be affected, on top of them not having functioning mouths. Exposed, damaged spines may also suggest a “spinelessness” or cowardice – further indication of either an inability or incapacity to resist, to act. Much can be read into the choice of their poses as well. The figure on the left seems relaxed, indifferent almost, as if he is waiting, resigned to his state of being. The figure in the middle, and the one on the far right, both give the appearance of paying attention to events the one on the far left hasn’t noticed (or won’t) yet. The Boy in the centre is alert, watchful, yet it is the one on the far right that suggests that he is about to move. Whether this reaction will result in a fight-or-flight response, is not made explicit, and it can be suggested that this conclusion can be left to the discretion of the viewer. The figures’ realism adds to the suggestion that each Boy is poised on the cusp of movement. MANFRED ZYLLA, pg 138 – 142 Bullets and Sweets, 1985 Death Trap, 1985 Games, 1985 NORMAN CATHERINE, pg 118 in textbook Dog of War, 1988 SAM NHLENGETHWA Sam Nhlengethwa was born in the mining community of Payneville Springs in 1955 and grew up in Ratanda location in Heidelberg, east of Johannesburg. He completed a two-year Fine Art Diploma at the Rorkes Drift Art Centre in the late 1970s. While he exhibited extensively both locally and abroad during the 1980s and ’90s, Nhlengethwa’s travelling solo show South Africa, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in 1993 established him at the vanguard of critical consciousness in South Africa and he went on to win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1994. Nhlengethwa was born into a family of jazz lovers; his two brothers both collected jazz music and his deceased eldest brother was a jazz musician. “Painting jazz pieces is an avenue or outlet for expressing my love for the music,” he once said in an interview. "As I paint, I listen to jazz and visualise the performance. Jazz performers improvise within the conventions of their chosen styles. In an ensemble, for example, there are vocal styles that include freedom of vocal colour, call-and-response patterns and rhythmic complexities played by different members. Painting jazz allows me to literally put colour onto these vocal colours. “Jazz is rhythmic and it emphasises interpretation rather than composition. There are deliberate tonal distortions that contribute to its uniqueness. My jazz collages, with their distorted patterns, attempt to communicate all of this. As a collagist and painter, fortunately, the technique allows me this freedom of expression… What I am doing is not new though, as there are other artists before me who painted jazz pieces. For example, Gerard Sekoto, Romare Bearden and Henri Matisse.” It left him cold, the death of Biko, 1990 In 1995, Nhlengethwa's work, It Left Him Cold – The Death of Steve Biko (1990) was selected for an important Pan-African show at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery. South Africa was represented by a selection of explicitly political artworks. The image is about Stephen (Steve) Biko's death. Biko was an antiapartheid activist who founded the Black Consciousness Movement. He died from severe head injuries inflicted while in police custody in 1977. Following the news of Biko's death, the Minister of Police said, "I am not glad and I am not sorry about Mr Biko. It leaves me cold." Nhlengethwa used collage and drawing in sombre colours.