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Contemporary South African Visual Art and the Postcolonial Imagination, 1992-Present

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Contemporary South African Visual Art and the Postcolonial Imagination, 1992-Present CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN VISUAL ART AND THE POSTCOLONIAL IMAGINATION, 1992-PRESENT A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Thembinkosi A Goniwe December 2017 © 2017 Thembinkosi A Goniwe CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN VISUAL ART AND THE POSTCOLONIAL IMAGINATION, 1992-PRESENT Thembinkosi A Goniwe, Ph.D. Cornell University 2017 This study examines themes of history, humanness, cultural appropriation and identity politics, as engaged by selected contemporary South African artists and scholars in the 1990s and 2000s. During this period visual artists produced artworks and scholars posited arguments characteristic of postcolonial imagination whose contemporary qualities demonstrated a shift away from the culture of resistance to that of innovative expressions and expanded subject matter. There also emerged contentions that evidenced the complexity of the transition from apartheid to democracy. Working with local discourses (by Njabulo Ndebele and Albie Sachs) preoccupied with a liberated imagination from the stranglehold of apartheid as well as global postcolonial theories (of C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha) on the aforementioned themes, this study presents six chapters. The introductory chapter maps out a theoretical framework and contextual background of the study and articulates the meaning of postcolonial imaginary. Chapter 1 reads Johannes Phokela’s oil paintings as a postcolonial critique of (art) iii history’s Eurocentrism and his visual rewriting of such history by inserting black subjects into colonial master narratives from which they were omitted, obliterated and misrepresented. Chapter 2 examines Zwelethu Mthethwa’s color photographs through which he proclaims to restore the dignity of black subjects surviving in the margins of postcolonial modernity. Chapter 3 is a critique of Peet Pienaar’s performance artwork which appropriates a Xhosa male initiation ritual and subjects a black female medical doctor to circumcise him in an art gallery. Chapter 4 reflects on Liese van der Watt’s call for post-identity, post-race and post-black. The concluding chapter reads the work of Phokela, Mthethwa, Pienaar and van der Watt in light of postcolonial desires: yearning and searching for something different from that which colonial apartheid has constructed and imposed on the South African imagination. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Thembinkosi Goniwe is an artist and art historian, who studied Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and History of Art at Cornell University. He has taught Fine Art and Art History at the University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Fort Hare and Vaal University of Technology. His artworks have been exhibited in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Wales. He has contributed essays to various publications, edited numerous exhibition catalogues, and curated exhibitions in South Africa, Italy and Scotland. v For my mother, Ntombentsha Gladys Goniwe vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For this study, I received financial support from Cornell University, the Rotary Foundation, the National Arts Council of South Africa and the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. I want to thank my committee members, Professor Salah Hassan, Professor Cheryl Finley and Professor Iftikhar Dadi, for the intellectual input and unbending support they gave me towards completing this study. I sincerely owe my completion to my advisor Professor Hassan’s scholarly guidance and moreover incessant commitment, encouragement, and patience. My family, friends, colleagues, and students provided me a reassuring support. Thank you all. A special gratitude goes to Bhavisha Panchia for all her consistent assistance. I am tremendously grateful to Ntombentsha Goniwe and Sindiswa Goniwe for their unconditional love and appreciation for my commitment to an ongoing education. It is for the love of Wendy Thamela and Yethu Gqola I have managed to complete this PhD. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ix INTRODUCTION: CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN VISUAL ART AND THE POSTCOLONIAL IMAGINATION 12 CHAPTER 1: A POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE OF (ART) HISTORY: JOHANNES PHOKELA’S PAINTINGS 46 CHAPTER 2: HUMANIZING BLACK SUBJECTS: ZWELETHU MTHETHWA’S PROCLAMATIONS AND COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS 95 CHAPTER 3: CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN PEET PIENAAR’S I WANT TO TELL SOMETHING 143 CHAPTER 4: “ARE WE ALL POSTRACIAL YET?”: REFLECTIONS ON POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA 193 CONCLUSION: POSTCOLONIAL DESIRES IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN ART 247 FIGURES 254 BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Johannes Phokela, Roman Charity, 2002. Oil on canvas, 25 x 28 inches. Figure 2: Johannes Phokela, Candle Bathing, 1998. Oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches. Figure 3: Johannes Phokela, Land of Cockaigne, 2000. Oil on canvas, 48 x 59 inches. Figure 4: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Interior Portraits: Pregnant Woman, 2000. Color print, 25 x 34 inches. Figure 5: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Interior Portraits: Pregnant Woman, 2000. Color print, 25 x 34 inches. Figure 6: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Interior Portraits: Mother and Child, 2000. Color print, 25 x 34 inches. Figure 7: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Interior Portraits: Mother and Child, 2000. Color print, 25 x 34 inches. Figure 8: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Interior Portraits: Untitled (Xhosa Initiates), 2001. Chromogenic print, 70 x 95 inches. Figure 9: Zwelethu Mthethwa, The Brave Ones, 2010. Digital c-print, 49 x 66 inches. Figure 10: Zwelethu Mthethwa, The Brave Ones, 2010. Digital c-print, 49 x 66 inches. Figure 11: Zwelethu Mthethwa, The Brave Ones, 2010. Digital c-print, 49 x 66 inches. Figure 12: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Common Ground, 2008. Chromogenic print, 59 x 76 inches. Figure 13: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Common Ground, 2008. Chromogenic print, 59 x 76 inches. Figure 14: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Common Ground, 2008. Chromogenic print, 59 x 76 inches. ix Figure 15: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Quartz Miners, 2008. Chromogenic print, 32 x 41 inches. Figure 16: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Coal Miners, 2008. Digital c-print, 59 x 76 inches. Figure 17: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Coal Miners, 2008. Chromogenic print, 59 x 79 inches. Figure 18: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Contemporary Gladiators, 2008. Chromogenic print, 59 x 76 inches. Figure 19: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Contemporary Gladiators, 2008. Digital c-print 32 x 41 inches. Figure 20: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Line of Negotiation: Sugar Cane, 2006. Digital c- print, 25 x 34 inches. Figure 21: Zwelethu Mthethwa, Line of Negotiation: Sugar Cane, 2006. Digital c- print, 33 x 42 inches. Figure 22: Peet Pienaar, I Want To Tell You Something, 2000. Video Still. Figure 23: Beezy Bailey, The Xhosa Initiate, 1999. Louis Botha statue dressed in Xhosa initiate’s clothing. Figure 24: Zwelethu Mthethwa and Beezy Bailey, Ticket To The Other Side, 2003. Color print, 32 x 41 inches. Figure 25: Zwelethu Mthethwa and Beezy Bailey, Ticket To The Other Side, 2003. Color print, 32 x 41 inches. Figure 26: Zwelethu Mthethwa and Beezy Bailey, Ticket To The Other Side, 2003. Color print, 32 x 41 inches. Figure 27: Tracey Rose, Ciao Bella: Venus Baartman, 2001. Lambda photograph, 47 x 47 inches. Figure 28: Tracey Rose, Ciao Bella: Regina Coeli, 2001. Lambda photograph, 46 x 47 inches. Figure 29: Tracey Rose, Ciao Bella: Bunnie, 2001. Lambda photograph, 46 x 47 inches. x Figure 30: Tracey Rose, Ciao Bella: Lolita, 2001. Lambda photograph, 47 x 47 inches. Figure 31: Churchill Madikida, Struggle of the Heart, 2003. Video stills. Figure 32: Churchill Madikida, Virus I, 2005. Lambda print, 42 x 41 inches. Figure 33: Churchill Madikida, Virus V, 2005. Lambda print, 42 x 41 inches. Figure 34: Thando Mama, (un)hea(r)d, 2002. Vide still. Figure 35: Thando Mama, We are afraid, 2003. xi INTRODUCTION CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN VISUAL ART AND THE POSTCOLONIAL IMAGINATION In the nineties, from the moment the country shifted irrevocably from apartheid to a representative democracy, the field of South African art has been in a state of constant invention. Contemporary artists of different generations were not only able to shift from modes of artistic production that were largely informed by the resistance culture under apartheid, but artists were also quick to adapt to the emerging global changes that made South African artists some of the most sought-after in exhibitions during the nineties. Okwui Enwezor (2008)1 South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy in the 1990s affirmed the contingency of artistic developments on the country’s socio-political context, at the same time attesting to the reasoning that art is inextricably connected to everyday socio-cultural and human concerns. As South Africa embarked on becoming a new polity2 there also emerged new artistic expressions and diverse representations. Visual arts demonstrated a different character from dominant narratives and stable forms that were circumscribed by proclivities and determinisms of colonial apartheid.3 Artworks that mushroomed evinced a variety of content, creative procedures, innovative mediums and experimentation with materials indicative of novel aesthetics that wrestled with the continuing and discontinuous historical problems and established artistic forms. Observable in some, if not most of these artworks, was a radical move 1 Okwui Enwezor, ““Better Lives,” Marginal Selves: Framing the Current Reception of Contemporary South African Art” in South African Art Now, Sue Williamson (2008), 16. 2 South Africa is a belated post-colonial
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