A South African Artist in the Age of Apartheid
Diana Wylie. Art and Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2008. Illustrations. 264 pp. $25.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8139-2764-0. Reviewed by Brenda Danilowitz Published on H-AfrArts (March, 2010) Commissioned by Jean M. Borgatti (Clark Univeristy) In the words of his lifelong friend Mongane death fve years later, she "wrote down every‐ Wally Serote, Thami Mnyele's "life, his presence, thing I could remember him having said" (p. 1). was a series of little actions, soft-spoken state‐ Those words and her memories, flled out with in‐ ments, that have accumulated into profound formation gleaned from scores of interviews and meaning."[1] In Art and Revolution, Diana Wylie wide-ranging archival research, are gathered to‐ sets out to unpack the meanings of those small ac‐ gether in Art and Revolution to provide not only a tions, to tell Mnyele's story, and to rescue his life remarkable portrait of an individual and his work from "ignorance" and "indifference" (p. 1). but also a richly nuanced rendering of a crucial Mnyele, struggling to fnd his way in South period in South Africa's history, brought to life Africa, crossed into neighboring Botswana in from the point of view of one of its lesser-known, 1979, and more or less forsook his dreams of be‐ yet significantly knowing, players. coming an artist when he joined the African Na‐ The short span of Mnyele's life--1948 to 1985-- tional Congress (ANC) in exile there. Seven years mirrored the trajectory of institutionalized later, aged thirty-seven, he was one of twelve peo‐ apartheid in South Africa.
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