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People and Politics in Contemporary African Art Curated by Shannen Hill with Kevin Tervala Baltimore Museum of Art December 18, 2016–December 10, 2017

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People and Politics in Contemporary African Art Curated by Shannen Hill with Kevin Tervala Baltimore Museum of Art December 18, 2016–December 10, 2017 exhibition review Shifting Views: People and Politics in Contemporary African Art curated by Shannen Hill with Kevin Tervala Baltimore Museum of Art December 18, 2016–December 10, 2017 reviewed by Deborah Stokes Shiing Views: People & Politics in Contem- Singana, Zola, Soweto, October is a large 1 Installation view of the Focus porary African Art is the third in a series of format (. cm x .) portrait (Fig. ). In Gallery, Shifting Views: People & Politics thematic exhibitions of African art installed in Contemporary African Art, Baltimore this photograph the room’s looming interior in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s (BMA) Museum of Art wall is as much a part of the subject as Ms. new Focus Gallery. e gallery debuted Mcingana reclining in the middleground of All photos courtesy of the Baltimore with Diverging Streams: Eastern Nigerian the composition. Notably, it is the rst pho- Museum of Art Art (April , –April , ) followed tograph that Goldblatt took in the Soweto by Design for Mobile Living: Art from township, and he remarks that Eastern Africa (June –November , ). Located adjacent to the recently (April ) houses [were] designed specically to reopened renovated and expanded galleries discourage people from putting down roots. for African art, its square feet fosters ey wanted people who lived here to be labourers in the so-called white economy and an intimate space for engagement through to go back home to their tribal homelands. close looking, nding connections, critical So that wall, that hellish wall, was a symbol thinking, and quiet reection (Fig. ). to me of the claustrophobic tightness of that Shiing Views, curated by Shannon Hill, place (Goldblatt ). time. Jantjes has explained: Associate Curator for African Arts, with Kevin Tervala, former Curatorial Fellow in About this same time (–), artist/ e racial label put on a non-white child at birth is not only a badge of a race, it is a per- the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and activist Gavin Jantjes was at work on his manent brand of inferiority, the brand of class Pacic Islands, features twenty-four works critical commentary A South African distinction. roughout his life his race label on paper by seven artists from the museum’s Colouring Book. Two of the eleven composite will warn all concerned which doors are open growing collection of contemporary art: prints from the full portfolio Edition / to him, and which are closed (Janjes –). David Goldblatt, Gavin Jantjes, William are displayed here: True Colors of the State Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Senam Okudzeto, (n.d.) and Color this Labor Dirt Cheap (n.d.). Jantjes’s work was banned in South Africa Robin Rhode, and Diane Victor. Installed e artist collected and overlayed selected and the artist went into exile in . against muted gray walls, they illustrate a photographs, newsprint, drawings, and As a stinging political satire, William mastery of techniques: drawing, photogra- texts representative of appalling apartheid Kentridge’s Industry and Idleness print phy, printmaking, and a novel manipulation injustices and ensuing explosive conicts. series of – was initiated one year of captured carbon soot deposits. Viewers In True Colors of the State Jantjes appropri- aer a state-of-emergency law, enacted are invited to rethink profound themes of ates photographer Laurie Bloomeld’s shot in response to mounting violent internal dislocation, racism, and loss, while locating depicting resistance by black South Africans opposition to and enforcement of apartheid connections to our own life and times— to racial rezoning policies near Durban. Pre- laws. Kentridge looks to William Hogarth’s political, personal, and social, past and sented as a child’s coloring book page, the series Industry and Idleness, a suite of present histories. title of the suite at rst relays a fond memory twelve engravings contrasting the success e comfortable gallery size invites vary- of a childhood activity of coloring printed in life of an industrious apprentice who is ing routes. My eye and aesthetic preferences line drawings—but the artist rapidly shis diligent and hardworking with the disas- led me the rst time around. A second, the mood and meaning to the adult world by trous downfall of an idle one. Kentridge’s longer look got me thinking about the applying acerbic titles of instruction echoing series shis the narrative to Johannesburg historical/social time frames in which these the structural oppression and racial discrim- in the mid-s to express a demoralizing seven artists were working. e earliest work ination lived by blacks and coloreds in South contrast between an industrious black man’s is by acclaimed documentary photographer Africa under the Afrikaner Nationalist Party life under apartheid to that of a white man David Goldblatt. Margaret Mcingana, who rule. e print includes a color bar referring who is wealthy and successful despite his later became famous as the singer Margaret to racial classications in South Africa at the oensive, lazy demeanor. VOL. 51, NO. 2 SUMMER 2018 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_r_00406 by guest on 25 September 2021 | 2 David Goldblatt Margaret Mcingana, who later became Famous as the singer Margaret Singana, Zola, Soweto, October 1970 (1970, printed 2014) Gift of Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern Photo: © David Goldblatt 3 Senam Okudzeto Detail from the series All Facts Have Been Changed to Protect the Ignorant (2000–2001) Nathan L. and Suzanne F. Cohen Contemporary Art Endowment connections. e title reads as a parody of space. It is dicult to turn away from these the tag line from the mid-twentieth century foreboding and paranoia-inducing images. American crime show Dragnet: “Only the In No. Rhode places an anonymous black names have been changed to protect the male smartly dressed in hat and scarf but innocent.” However, perhaps these gures with the jarring insertion of metal calipers are in an unending mode of resistance and used to measure the external size of an movement—and it is the viewer who has object (Fig. ). In this case, the calipers are become complicit and “ignorant.” not hand-held, but rather somehow xed to Landscape Allegories (–) by the face and/or eyes of the subject standing Moving into the twenty-rst century, Julie Mehretu bring together six exquisite before a blank impenetrable and reective Senam Okudzetor’s All Facts Have Been abstract vistas (Fig. ). Mehretu has chosen surface. As a backdrop, Rhode uses an Changed to Protect the Ignorant () is aquatint and drypoint engraving techniques architectural plan draed in late eighteenth composed of oating gural and circular to express movement through dramatically century England for the circular prison gridded forms (Fig. ). e four diminutive shiing sites and terrain. rough her use called a panopticon. All jailed inmates gures in a variety of shiing and plummet- of meticulously draed drypoint lines in could be eciently observed by only one ing poses are painted in acrylic over graphite short, sharply detached strokes, Mehretu’s guard in a central interior station. In the onto thin, fragile, silver-wash rice paper. engraved burr holds a dense lm of ink that nineteenth century, scientists and physical e curators equate the small paper pieces prints as a rich, velvety black. She uses layer anthropologists practiced now-discredited to pages torn from a slave ship’s ledger. upon layer of tonal values and subtle color to “craniometry,” measuring cranial features of e unsteady gures, however, are oating evoke a visual momentum across the surface various racial groups with calipers in order through a large open space—contrary to the of the print. Her gestural action evokes a to assign people to various character clas- traumatic and dehumanizing method by sensation of sweeping through summits, sications. Rhode forces the viewer to cast which Africans were transported into slav- peaks, and upheavals of real and imagined our eyes as testament to the malevolence of ery to Europe and the Americas. e gures movements, splintering and igniting passage harsh systems of governance and justice. evoke a sense of insecurity and dislocation; through our shared landscapes. Two haunting portraits by Diane Victor the silhouetted bodies are tethered and Robin Rhode’s series of four photogravure are from her Frailty and Failing series: grasping at wavering, artist-drawn “life- prints titled Pan’s Opticon Studies () Smokescreen and Smokescreen . Her lines,” suggesting precarious and uncertain creates a disquieting presence in this small series of thirty-six “smoke” portraits of african arts SUMMER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 2 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_r_00406 by guest on 25 September 2021 4 Julie Mehretu Plate 1 from the portfolio Landscape Allegories (2003–2004) Julie Mehretu and Burnet Editions 5 Robin Rhode Pan’s Opticon Studies, No. 2 (2009) Robin Rhode and Niels Borch Jensen Photo: © Robin Rhode the BMA’s rst exhibition of contempo- rary African art and with it demonstrates the museum’s commitment to expanding the narrative of art history. is reviewer, for one, looks forward to the next focused installment. D S is curator for education at the National Museum of African Art at the Smithso- nian Institution, Washington, DC. [email protected] people with AIDS whom the artist had using the BMA’s permanent collection—one Notes encountered at the St. Raphael HIV/AIDS can only show what one has—while at the Smoke Portraits, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Centre clinic in Grahamstown also reect same time building a framework around sig- October –December , those in our midst who have been victim- nicant and profound themes. ese works ized, cause discomfort in a society’s daily bring into view the ways that great art can References cited Goldblatt, David. “Life rough the Lens.” Talk consciousness, and are rendered invisible. express and arouse individual inquiry and at the Design Indaba Conference, Capetown, S.A., Victor reinforces the notion of fragility transformation.
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