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From Pierneef to Gugulective

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From Pierneef to Gugulective 100 Years Of South African Art: From Pierneef To Gugulective. Okechukwu Nwafor Abstract Friday and Saturday the 1st and 2nd October, 2010 respectively, were very important days in South Africa. The reason being that the Iziko South African gallery in Cape Town organized an artists’ panel discussion to mark the grand finale of “1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective,” an exhibition hung on April 15, 2010 to mark 100 years of South African Art. This essay examines this epochal exhibition (which I attended in Cape Town) and its accompanying artists’ panel, underscoring their significance in the defeat of colonial legacies and the transformative process that witnessed resistance art in South Africa. Exhibition Theme A reflection over October 1, 2010, which is the opening date of this South African exhibition, would reveal that the date is also momentous for Nigeria’s history. On this same day (1st October, 2010), while Riason Naidoo, the first black director of South African National Gallery was busy upturning the face of Iziko gallery which had suffered from a 100 years of colonial legacy, a bomb exploded near the venue of Nigeria’s independence day celebration. It is remarkable that these two incidents simultaneously underscore a contradiction of some sorts: while the one deploys art to achieve national cohesion the other deploys terrorism to threaten national cohesion. The theme of the exhibition, “1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective,” is indeed a conceptual one that speaks a practical language also. It is a theme that draws on selective genealogy to convey a purposeful and readable treatise. The curator, Naidoo, who incidentally is the museum director, might have been accused of selective amnesia or subversive genealogy but he was out to disengage history from lopsided perpetuation. By juxtaposing the works of the younger generation artists such as Gugulective with 91 AJELLS: Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies Volume 4 No. 1, 2013 the old masters like J. H. Pierneef, he achieved an exhibitionary egalitarianism that has eluded the gallery over the past 100 years. By allowing younger voices to speak inside the spaces hitherto filled with old colonial voices, the whole Iziko display spaces now sing an emancipatory epoch-making song. This epoch-making song reflects the nature of freedom that resistance art aspired to during the apartheid period. However, while it seems that resistance art during apartheid experienced creative strangulation and containment, this essay deploys some of the artworks in this exhibition to suggest that South African contemporary art, through this exhibition, achieves freedom necessary to chart collective identities across boundaries of difference. Exhibition strategy as historical interrogation The Pieneef show involves the collective engagement of artists of sundry socio-cultural backgrounds spanning a period of 100 years. The whole Iziko gallery closed in March 2010 to give way for what Riason Naidoo described as “the re-hanging” of all the works in the entire gallery (4). Apart from this “re-hanging” more works were collected from other municipalities, universities, cooperate and private organizations. The exhibition, which Naidoo described as “an amazing adventure” was organized in 10 weeks and was opened during the period of World Cup to tie in with the increased visitors expected during that period. That exhibition strategy serves as historical inquiry is echoed in this exhibition. For example, the works and experiences of the 1930s and 40s were once again unveiled in Moses Tladi’s work titled No. 1 Crown Mines and Jabulani Ntuli’s minutely detailed pencil drawings. These two artists represent epochal efforts by black artists to find their feet in the questionable artistic environment of early 20th century South Africa. Both the artworks produced during and after apartheid seem to have integrated Copyright@Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria. 92 AJELLS: Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies Volume 4 No. 1, 2013 collective and personal experiences of sufferings and triumph into a creative process needed to articulate national history. In the broad perspective provided by this exhibition, one can begin a reappraisal of the interrelationship between professionalism and levels of artistic experience. If the exhibition is poignantly critical of establishments and status quo then it has initiated a space for radical reassessment of exhibitionary complexes. While historians have shifted from regarding visual images as emblematic of the past they also note of ’visual history’ as that which makes and remakes meaning and historical knowledge (Witz, Minkley and Rassool, 4). In this way one may view the Pierneef show as visual history given the fact that in South Africa “histories have erupted into the public sphere in visual form” (Rassool, 5). It is possible that the Pierneef exhibition created different understandings of culture and also contributed in shaping and reshaping history. Riason Naidoo, the exhibition curator, created a space for collective artistic engagement outside the dominant apartheid discourse. Inside this space new understandings of culture and history were articulated. Not only did Naidoo play an active role in recreating South African art history, he was also able to focus on the supposed suggestion mapped by the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa Report (443)” which urged South Africans to engage in integrating their shared histories. According to TRC “Somewhere down the line, we must succeed in integrating, through political engagement, all our histories, in order to discontinue the battles of the past… If we fail in this regard, we will fail to be a nation” (443). It seems that the practicality of this report is well exemplified in Naidoo’s exhibition which no doubt also recognizes the differences and contentions raised in the months following the exhibition. Some of these contentions hold, for example, that Naidoo “eschewed the old colonial artworks in favour of contemporary works” thereby offering racial differentiation of old white artists against contemporary black Copyright@Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria. 93 AJELLS: Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies Volume 4 No. 1, 2013 artists in South Africa (Corigall, 16). Another critic, Llyod Pollock in the South African Times condemned Naidoo under the title “SANG’s reputation trashed for 2010 show.” There are positive remarks on the show. For example Miles Keylock praised the exhibition as nothing short of a revolution” (Minnaar, 12). the exhibition as nothing short of a revolution” (Minnaar, 12). Some artists and their artworks presented at the show Some of the works exhibited in the show include an installation piece titled Amanzi Amdaka (Figure I) by the Gugulethu based art collective known as Gugulective. The Gugulective reflects collaborative art project that enables the spectators to see new socio-economic relationships in South Africa through installation. In this installation, factors to be taken into account include not only the individual’s embodied, discursive and habituated practices of interaction with other artists but also their relationships with the spaces they work in, and their personal engagement and identification with collective historical and social issues in South Africa. In these historical and social engagements the Gugulective, since its inception in 2006, has questioned the boundaries that continue to fragment South African society. Figure I. Gugulective Amanzi Amdaka, 2009-2010, Installation, zinc baths, audio. Photo: Okechukwu Nwafor Copyright@Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria. 94 AJELLS: Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies Volume 4 No. 1, 2013 The collective is made up of a group of young artists, musicians, writers, DJs, rappers and poets active in Cape Town’s eastern townships. Current members include Ziphozenkosi Dayile, Athi Mongezeleli Joja, Ayanda Kilimane, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Dathini Mzayiya and Unathi Sigenu. These cultural practitioners proclaim that the collective was borne out of a need for intellectual and creative spaces on the periphery of the mainstream art world and for the past years have primarily been working and exhibiting in a local shebeen called Kwa-Malmli’s in Gugulethu. Reimagining the shebeen as an exhibition space, the Gugulective have persisted in having shows in their own neighbourhood rather than being pulled into the centre of town. However, they have begun showing on a number of big shows around South Africa and other parts of the world. It seems fitting therefore that the Gugulective, in their installation in this exhibition, portray the crisis of socio-economic predicament of contemporary South Africa. Their work is made up of zinc washtubs of the type ubiquitous in smaller homes and townships, with concealed recordings providing viewers with an audio experience. This work disrupts the narrative of progress advanced by the new post apartheid state. As an instrument of social change the Gugulective reflects the deprivation from economic advancement which individuals living in the slums experience. The artists collectively assert that democracy’s policies have not engendered an eradication of the previous regime but rather veiled the reality of poverty through a smoke screen of democracy. Other works at the show include George Pemba’s The Audience (Figure 2). George Pemba, born in 1912 in Hill’s Kraal, Korsten, Port
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