Issue 49 / April 2021 Notes on Curating www.oncurating.org Decolonial Propositions Edited by Nkule Mabaso and Jyoti Mistry Contributions by David Andrew, jackï job, Henri Kalama, Sharlene Khan, Unathi Kondile, Nobunye Levin, Nkule Mabaso, Nomusa Makhubu, Zen Marie, Miguel Marrengula, Bekele Mekonnen, Jyoti Mistry, Linda Makgabutlane, Bongani Mkhonza, Nduka Mntambo, Nomcebisi Moyikwa, Lindokuhle Nkosi, Jay Pather, Nwabisa Plaatjie, Ruth Sacks Contents Decolonial Propositions 2 Introductory Comments: Initiatives and Strategies Jyoti Mistry and Nkule Mabaso On Art Institutions On Artistic Practice 11 71 ArtSearch: Punch and Judy, Butoh and the Third Space: Pavements and Ponzi Schemes Inhabiting Difference and Difficulty in Academia Jyoti Mistry and David Andrew and the Performing Arts in South Africa jackï job 26 The Paradox of the Art School in a University 83 Zen Marie I Make Art – Voicing Voice, Speaking Self and Doing Criticality 30 Sharlene Khan Relocating the Centre: Decolonising the University Art Collections 99 in South Africa Land as Milk: The Body as a Border Bongani Mkhonza Interview: Nwabisa Plaatjie by Lindokuhle Nkosi 38 104 Ukuqhuqh Inkwethu yobuKoloniyali: Qash-Qash: One Mirror Image Getting Rid of the Thick Layer of Black Womanhood of Colonial Dandruff on our Heads Interview: Nomcebisi Moyikwa by Linda Makgabutlane Unathi Kondile 110 46 Performing Blackface: Reflections on Reshaping Wax: Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama Addis Ababa—the Alle School of Fine Arts Nomusa Makhubu and Design Bekele Mekonnen 123 Willful Walking 52 Nobunye Levin Painting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Culture and Identity 142 Interview: Henri Kalama by Ruth Sacks Decartographical Sketches Nduka Mntambo 57 Building a School of Thought, 163 the Case for ISADEL Mozambique Caught up in Multiply-Layered Skirts Interview: Miguel Marrengula by Nkule Mabaso or What’s a Stripper Doing in Julius Caesar ? Jay Pather 60 Photo Gallery 1 Issue 49 / April 2021 Introductory Comments: Initiatives and Strategies Decolonial Propositions Introductory Comments: Initiatives and Strategies Jyoti Mistry and Nkule Mabaso The two events (ArtSearch, March 2017 and Third Space Symposium, August 2017) from which these contributions are drawn took place at an exceptionally volatile moment in South African higher education. The Fees Must Fall movement which started in October 2015 while, on the one hand challenging tuition and tuition increases, high- lighted on the other hand, the structural inaccessibility to higher education. Moreover, it brought into stark relief the legacies of racial privilege sedimented in institutional structures that had not been responsive to the growing urgency for transformation in art institutions and universities: its hiring practices, student recruitment, the curricu- lum, the recognition of art practices that acknowledge and accommodate different epistemologies and aesthetics. This has been a protracted journey in arriving at this open-ended ‘ending’—the consolidation of these contributions was forged from a period of resistance, protests, introspections and reflections, deliberation and conversations… This publication marks rather a pause, a moment of bringing together the contributions that provided a reflective rest to recall all the efforts that were drawn from not just the spark of this movement but provides a recognition that in spite of the numerous challenges the space to support engaged dialogue was possible. 1974 John Muafangejo’s linocut, An interview at the University of Cape Town (1971), depicts the artist being interviewed for entrance to the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Eight pairs of eyes stare out of the frame while Muafangejo, a lone figure on one side of the table, has his gaze fixed across rather than directly at the phalanx of interviewers. The crowded faces stare across a large table, three of them wielding dagger-style pen, paint brush and scalpel. The open book, perhaps it is Muafangejo’s portfolio, sits in the hands of a conjoined/self-opposing member of the interviewer team, suggests a single authoritative narrative wielded by the pale faced custo- dians of the institution. Muafangejo was rejected by Michaelis and took up a residency at Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft School. fig. 1: An interview at the University of Cape Town (1971) by John Muafangejo 2 Issue 49 / April 2021 Introductory Comments: Initiatives and Strategies Decolonial Propositions 2003 The documentary film The luggage is still labelled: Black- ness in South African art, was created by Vuyile Voyiya McGee and Julie McGee. It consists of interviews, primarily with black artists in Cape Town, who reflect on the racially segregated art world that still prevails in educational institutions, museums and galleries. Many of the artists speak from direct experience, making the https://www.youtube.com/ connection between apartheid’s institutional marginali- watch?v=m9WMkaVl-_0 sation of black artists and the contemporary persistence of white privilege. The interviews capture the ‘post- apartheid’ era in which gatekeepers of the art world reproduce imperial and colonial structures with scant attention to the stultifying effect on artists. The artists express an urgent need to transform institutional structures so as to include epistemologies and aesthetic art practices from multiple sources and experiences and not just the canonised tropes of Western, European art. 2015 The Rhodes Must Fall movement starts at the University of Cape Town. Same Mdluli: “… student activist Chumani Maxwele threw a bucket of excrement at the Cecil John Rhodes statue. This performative act spiralled into a movement that saw a generation of young South Africans challenging monuments and structures that are a representation of the past. While the protests were primarily in response to the lack of trans- formation within institutional structures that continue to ignore and neglect the ‘real’ lived experiences of marginal- ised people—who in South Africa make up a majority of black African people—it is also important to point out fig. 2: Chumani Maxwele throws excrement on Rhodes statue that the ‘RhodesMustFall’ movement was also a response to a continued monumental and symbolic presence of reminders of a painful past that South Africa has in many ways not yet addressed,” (2017).1 March 2017 Artsearch Symposium at the University of the Witwatersrand. Using artistic research as a way to address decolonising practices, this three-day symposium brought together international scholars and practitioners from various disciplines. The presentations offered creative strategies to transform art institutions and recognise previously unacknowledged artistic practices and forms. 3 Issue 49 / April 2021 Introductory Comments: Initiatives and Strategies Decolonial Propositions “[T]he understanding of this decolonization … could help us not only to shift away from western-centric belief systems but also to debunk their recurrent predomi- nance. Therefore, decolonising visualities is a call for a paradigm shift and recogni- tion of previously marginalised modalities in order to make subtle and covert form[s] of colonial influence perceptible, inside and outside of academia. And this requires a breakaway from the western-centric education model into an African model of education,” Mawande Ka Zenzile, 2017.2 August 2017 3rd Space Symposium held at Cape Town University’s Institute of Creative Arts (ICA). Centred on creative practices ranging from performance, dance, theatre, film and visual arts, the second iteration of the 3rd Space Symposium focused less on institutional trans formation and more on multiple aesthetic practices and strategies that challenged canonised Western and European art modes. It drew from unresolved histories and experiences that had been rendered invisible under colonialism and apartheid, and through race and class privileges. Decolonial propositions September 2020 Much has changed and more has remained resistant, the conversation to decolonise knowledge has once again brought to the fore some of the unfinished historical griev- ances and injustices which continue to define the present. Our truncated timeline points out to some these moments and the practices directed at this ‘yet to be con- cluded’ project of decolonisation especially in relation to grievances and injustices in education that no progressive African can afford to ignore. Some of the interviewee subjects in The Luggage is Still labelled occupy positions of power in the same institutions that received criticism in the documentary… the present and recurrent complaints speak to the coloniality of power, irrespective of whether one sits inside of the institution; or not – categorical non-conformity does not suffice to change the status quo. The demand for intervention is urgent and long overdue. Overview of the Anthology The material of this publication is drawn in part from the March and August 2017 symposiums. It is augmented by reflections and experiences that connect the past with the relative immediacy of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which, having gained momentum, expanded to the national and later the international Fees Must Fall campaign. The content of the publication moves beyond these seminal moments to discuss the myriad strategies that educators and artists use to address inequality and to create a futurity that is “uttered” on its own terms. “[T]hinking decolonially (that is, thinking within the frame of the decolonial option) means to start from ‘enunciation’ and not from ‘representation’.