“Local cultural institutions have adopted the month of February as the visual arts month, transforming Cape Town into a cultural hub”

The 8th edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) returns to the Cape Town Convention centre between 14th – 16th February.  As the largest contemporary art fair on the African continent, the ICTAF coalesces 107 exhibitors and amasses over 16 000 visitors. 

The fair is accompanied by a curated talks programme which brings together leading experts on a range of topics. Curator of the talks programme, Tumelo Mosaka elaborates, ‘The Talks program is very special for me as it is the space where dialogue about issues important in the art world can be engaged by various experts from within and outside the country. It offers an opportunity to introduce the public to some of the issues while also reflecting on others that might have been topical.’ He adds, ‘I’ve always approached the talks as a discursive platform aimed at broader dialogue about the state the arts field. For this year, we will explore arts philanthropy in Africa especially in light of all the new museums cropping up in Africa. Also the question of the role of museums has become a topical issue given issues around reparation and repatriation. Of course hearing from artists is always a treat, getting a glimpse into artists process as well as exploring the challenges of non-profit sector. So we have a lot to discuss that is important.’

For the first time this year, the fair will include a film programme; ART.DOC. Staged at Cape Town’s oldest cinema, The Labia Theatre, ART.DOC will showcase a selection of films including; Billy Monk – Shot in the dark (directed by Craig Cameron-Mackintosh), Sue Williamson, It’s a pleasure to meet you (directed by Sue Williamson) and Imagining Simon Stone (directed by Michaela Limberis). 

Running concurrently with the fair is a series of exciting exhibitions across the city; Materiality (group show) and This song is for… (Gabrielle Goliath) at the Iziko South African National Gallery, without a clear discernible image: Kevin Beasley at A4 Arts Foundation, stukkinne stories and The Royal House of Allure at blank projects, Carrie Mae Weems II Over Time at the Goodman Gallery as well as a Blue is the warmest colour at Bkhz studios’ pop-up exhibition space. 

As with many fairs across the world, the Cape Town Art Fair’s organising logic is centred around commercial interests; presenting an opportunity for established and emerging artists to attract new audiences and gain access to markets. Over and above this, it has the potential to initiate new and interesting conversations or to bring forth ideas and discourse into the general consciousness. A key example of this is the (re)emergence, contemplations and complications of notions of modernity and modernism(s). As part of its presentation, Stevenson Gallery will present Ernst Mancoba’s ink and watercolour work; Drawing. This inclusion of Mancoba feels very pertinent and salient because of course, Mancoba’s practice is instructive in explorations of modernity. Stevenson will also present Mawande Ka Zenzile, pre-empting his upcoming solo; Udludlilali, which will open on the 12th of March. 

Another artist to look out for is Francois-Xavier Gbré (France), who is represented by Cecile Fakhoury Gallery. Gbré’s work is an exploration and revisitation of histories through the landscape where the past is understood as “foreign and unfinished”. Gbré is one of ten artists selected as part of the Tomorrows/Today special segment alongside; Danica Lundy (Canada), Amanda Mushate (Zimbabwe), Andy Robert (Haiti), Fathi Hassan (Egypt), Ernesto Shikhani (Mozambique), Nnenna Okore (Australia), Gregory Olympio (Togo), Bonolo Kavula (South Africa) and Isabelle Grobler (South Africa).  Tomorrows/Today is a curated segment of the fair, which acknowledges emerging artists —those who have previously gone unrecognised and those who are at the early stages of their careers. This year, it is curated by Nkule Mabaso (Curator, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town) and Luigi Fassi (Artistic Director, MAN-Contemporary Art Museum, Nuoro, Italy).

Thandiwe Msebenzi is also exhibiting with SMITH. Msebenzi explains the concept behind her work; “Egwaveni is a game I played as a child with my friends, we would sing “egwaveni” and touch or gesture towards our vagina, which we referred to as the “gwava”. This is a game we played freely and openly on the streets. It became interesting when we played it around men, it intimidated them and in turn there was a strength we gained in that as young girls. The work is part of a bigger body of work that looks at the intersectonality of gender binaries, told through memories, experiences, and childhood games.”

Once again the city will vibrate and reverberate with art and art-related events during the long fair weekend.

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“History and the past are not one and the same.” it is this very simple yet resonant line that makes me pay attention to Sepideh Mehraban’s latest show; Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter. The setting off point for this exhibition (which includes eight works of mixed media on found carpets) is, of course, a quote from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
The exhibition proposes to us that history, as a study or retelling of past events, is in fact not neutral—it is shaped, crafted and moulded by those with power, where forces of censorship and propaganda are constantly in operation to undermine and silence.

Mehraban investigates, examines and cross-examines recent Iranian histories using “formal” and “informal” accounts and records (memories, stories, oral history, newspapers, archives, carpets, family photographs); both public and private, real and metaphorical records function as repositories that can be (re)negotiated and (re)interpreted. This amalgamation of personal and public accounts deviates from unchallenged methods that present history as final. Furthermore, the use of abstraction as a mode of creation (with the grid format of the newspaper as a source of inspiration) recontextualises how we think through history, lending the works as prompts into further inquiries as opposed to retellings of ‘facts’.

I interviewed Mehraban to find out more about the exhibition, her research and her practice.

NM: I was intrigued by the notion (in the exhibition text) that history and the past are not the same. Can you speak more about this?

SM: History is only one angle of the past, history is a story we are told, usually by those who manage to speak the loudest. The title of this body of work draws from a famous line in Chinua Achebe’s seminal work Things Fall Apart; Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter.
My goal is to challenge the idea that someone or some entity can tell you what happened to you. It’s really critical to have these conversations, especially in places where the conversation is so highly politicised.

NM: Can you speak to us about the format of the newspaper as a source of inspiration? What do you feel this format allows you to do (or not do)?

SM: Newspapers are physical artefacts of the past. They belong to the time when cellphones, the internet and twitter didn’t exist. Their materiality, like books, is nostalgic and also in a way traumatic. They are traumatic because the news is tampered with over the course of history. In the case of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the news do not follow the narrations and stories that many Iranian families have experienced. The grid of the newspaper is a signifier of the structure of spreading information and at the same time control of information where we see the elements of propaganda and censorship play out. Censorship and propaganda are just as traumatic as the actual violence of revolution.

NM: I’m thinking of the newspaper from the lens of censorship and propaganda (as you’ve mentioned above). Through your explorations of history, what can you tell us about the relationship between these different parts of how history is told and experienced?

SM: My childhood experiences and family’s stories were at odds with the official state history, the controlled and censored domestic news channels, and also with the increasingly reductive international media and its lifeless headlines and statistics.
It is this discord between the grand narrative and the chronicles of everyday people that I explore in my work, the multitude of personal histories behind (and absent from) the headlines and politics. Stories of individual lives, of hopes for change, of disappointment and ultimately of the humanity behind the abstracted media coverage. It’s a subject with universal relevance, as I discovered on relocating to South Africa in 2012. I found parallels between the two countries: the complex histories marked by trauma and political turmoil, empty promises and disillusionment, and the abundant memories and lived histories of ordinary people.

NM: When I think about the carpet and paint over the carpet I have an image of covering and uncovering and I think we can say this with history as well, where we have an understanding of the accounts that make up history until we uncover more and more. With your research into the 1979 revolution, can you speak to us about things that you are uncovering?

SM: The 1979 revolution was a populist and nationalist movement consisting of Marxists, Islamic socialists, secularists and Shi’a Islamists. These diverse groups united to overthrow the monarchy but instead of a democracy, they ushered in an Islamic fundamentalist-led theocracy under Ruhollah Khomeini. There is propaganda by the current government to frame the movement as a religious uprising, which is not the case. The 1979 revolution was an uprising against a dictatorship with a hope for a better future.

NM: Can you talk to us about how you are thinking through post-apartheid South Africa and post-revolutionary Iran, together, if at all?

SM: Both of these countries have complex histories marked by trauma. The recent student movements such as Rhodes Must Fall, Fees Must Fall and Open Stellenbosch of 2015 are indicators of social and political changes. These protests influenced governmental action (e.g. university fees were frozen after the Fees Must Fall campaign in 2015). There were also student uprisings on the other side of the hemisphere in Iran; after the 2009 controlled presidential election, which saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad come into power. At the present moment, there are still protests occurring in Iran after the increased price of petroleum where people are demanding a long-term resolution from the government. Over the course of a week, the government shut down the internet and at least 106 people were killed during demonstrations. There is no international coverage of this in western media nor in the Iranian national media. People are cut off from the world which is nerve-racking to witness in 2019.
In Iran and South Africa, the student uprisings and protests are characterised by the traumatisation and upheaval of ordinary lives. In both countries, protests are indicative of a need for political change and transformation.

NM: I’m interested in this idea of intergenerational trauma; how do you see this manifesting today and how do we begin to think of ways of fracturing that trauma and moving towards healing?

SM: We need more empathy toward each other and our world. We need more care. We need leaders who promote humanity and equality for everyone. We could make small changes by starting with our families and our communities. We need to listen. There are many voices that need to be heard and it takes years to heal completely but it’s not impossible. The future is bright with our younger generation—with their awareness and knowledge of their world and themselves.

Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter is on view at SMITH in Cape Town until 30th November. For more information about the exhibition or the artist, you can contact Jana Terblanche at jana@smithstudio.co.za.

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Katharien de Villiers’ Bananas and Saints Alike is a seedbed for humour, exploration, fantasy and joyful emergence. In this exhibition, showing at SMITH in Cape Town (till 30th Nov), de Villiers presents a collection of paintings in mixed media—fabric, wood, oil pastels, acrylic, car paint and found objects—these components that do not always exist together in a gallery setting create a complicated and irregular network of paths, inviting the viewer to join in on the journey of meaning-making through spontaneous and undirected playfulness. The starting point is a question (or perhaps questions), followed by states of confusion. However, de Villiers doesn’t run away from this confusion, she welcomes these tattered shards of incertitude and embraces them as potentially generative.

From the title, all the way to the imagery, Bananas and Saints Alike accepts the fundamental notion that life is often incongruous, illogical, perplexing and un-encompassable. There is no illusion of order, no imposition of narrative, no metaphors, no ideology, no historical analysis or even politics. Meaning is created through engagement, but it also reconstructs and mutates through multiple re-engagements.

Below is a short but very insightful conversation I had with the artist about the exhibition.

NM: For this exhibition, the question of “what is the show about?” remains unresolved. Given this state, what would you say the exhibition is pointing us to or asking us?

KdV: The question “what is the show about” remains unresolved simply because the show is many things. The show is one founded on questions and potential relations instead of answers and clear understanding. In its confoundedly unresolved nature, Bananas and Saints Alike is waiting in anticipation for the viewer to respond.
I am drawn to scenarios that don’t feign truth, but rather acknowledge the prevalent confusion of real life. This confusion is fueled by multitudes of meta-narratives driven by vastly different bodies and minds. Bananas and Saints Alike is a world open to the grey of the daily, the hybridity of understanding and the overwhelming nature of even the simplest moments when one wishes to understand.

NM: If a show defies political commentary, historical analysis, or self-examination then it seems the idea of storytelling becomes one of the ways in which the work can be interacted with. What stories are you personally interested in right now?

KdV: A year ago I read a book by Nigerian author, Teju Cole, called Known and Strange Things. It is a collection of essays which takes the reader into the non-linear, relational mind of this incredible author. Similar to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Cole peels back the readers’ eyelids, forcing one to acknowledge and experience the complexities of contemporary “truths”/ moments. These stories have had a massive impact on my work— not because of the subject matter, but rather because of the exploratory nature of the author’s voice. With this body of work, I was driven toward exposing mundane narratives (a washing line, a fruit basket, a low-budget shrine) as the complex things they have become over time and in the mouths of many.

NM: As an artist, what is your relationship with play?

KdV: In my practice playing can be immediately related to making. Making is simply thought made visible, and has proven itself to be my most successful means of finding out whether something would work. The possibilities that thrive in play cannot always reach their potential if the outcome has been programmed, but when thought is translated as rhizomatic progress through making, play reigns supreme.

NM: One could argue that there is a “withholding” in this exhibition. “The act or art of withholding” conjures up ideas of mystery for me, do you feel that there is still enough mystery in the (art)world? Maybe the starting point should be why mystery?

KdV: Why not mystery? Mystery exists in all the most beautiful facets of our lives—love, spirituality, forgiveness, and ultimately, it is the core of this thing called life. For thousands of years individuals have been caught up in “the truth of life”—personally, I prefer the mysteries. Mystery exists sometimes despite the hard truths we find in our daily lives. It is the feeling before you fall asleep and the moment the sun sets behind the horizon. It is what you take home after watching an inspiring film or eating a mouthful of delicious food. There can never be a shortage of mystique; only our inability to acknowledge it. Reality often tries to replace mystery with understanding, but why open yourself up to such disappointment?

NM: I’m interested in the idea of mutation as method, why is this notion of mutation worthwhile? What does it do?

KdV: Mutation allows change. It is free-flowing energy designed to allow external forces to influence and alternate the path a piece was originally set on. Besides the physical presence of mutation (interaction between 2D and 3D, the morphing of the boundaries of canvas or super-imposed imagery contorting a clear understanding of the work) the most powerful changes take place once the works have left my studio and enter the public realm. There they are exposed to all kinds of projections from every engaging viewer. The ultimate mutation is the works bending and folding to fit versatile narratives. Being made as subjects in flux, it is only natural for the works to be opened up for further transformation.

NM: Can you tell us about specific works in the show, that have completely mutated or transformed from what they were when you began making them (either in terms of the idea, the materials or the entire form)?

KdV: By far my greatest challenge was Bananas and Saints Alike. The title piece of the show started as a relatively small collage of snake-skin material, Mary with Baby-J and about four bananas. What started out as a manageable piece became the heavy-weight championship of my young career. It was also the first piece that broke the boundaries of the canvas (and my first real engagement with yellow- in no uncertain terms). The piece’s mutation set the tone for further works, forcing me to push each piece beyond the point of breaking into a realm where it can exist beyond its original context.

Katharien de Villiers was born in 1991 in Cape Town. She currently lives and works in Cape Town.
For more information about the exhibition or the artist, you can contact Jana Terblanche from SMITH Gallery Cape Town at jana@smithstudio.co.za.

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MOTHER IS A DRUM is a solo exhibition by Grace Cross, presented at SMITH in Cape Town (31 July – 31 August 2019). The show is an exploration of motherhood and the physical actions that accompany the experience – the revelations of motherhood, what Lucienne Bestall, in a text accompanying the exhibition, refers to as the pleasures of abiding, of repetition, of surrender, of finding in ordinary devotion the most perfect communion.

Below is a short conversation with the artist, Grace Cross, about the show.

NM: Looking through the work and thinking through these physical actions of motherhood, I can’t help but think of choreography – a sequence of repeated actions; repeated day in, day out. Is this something you can comment on?

GC: So much of being a mother is a blur of ritual and repetition undertaken with huge amounts of energy and love. There is both pleasure and boredom derived from these daily meditations of care. It is like a dance between you and your child, they reverberate and reflect off you constantly, learning and growing how to be in the world. I love the idea of a mother being like a drum; able to bounce back, to always reflect an immediate response, and for play to emerge through the repetition of its beats.

I wanted repeated phrases and patterns in the paintings to reflect the rituals of motherhood. The urging, scooping, wiping, rocking, picking up becomes the daily beat of early mothering. You see these repetitions in the painted text ‘pat pat pat pat’ or ‘pick drop pick drop pick’. It requires powers of ordinary devotion. And that very ordinariness builds through its repeated everydayness to a kind of colossal, beating, fierce love between mother and child that there is nothing quite like.

NM: The titles of the works are quite potent, what is the process through which you named the works? 

GC: I like to title work with poetic text that illuminates and opens up what is inside the frame. Many titles link to theories I’ve been researching, like Winnicott’s ‘good enough mother’, or the term ‘when one becomes two’, which looks to reframe the way we talk about babies without referring to the mother, as they are absolutely inseparable entities from each other.

Others refer to common english expressions and idioms like ‘the mother of invention’ or ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. ‘Jugs’ is a work with many breasts patterned and built upon each other, some leaking, some vessels overflowing. The title references ceramic jugs that hold liquid, and refers to the colloquium for breasts, and also the juggling act that mothering requires.

NM: The yarn (particularly red) is a recurring thread in the works, does this speak to something specific? 

GC: I see painted red thread in my work as connecting me to a legacy of women that have come before me, and as the figurative umbilical cord that connects me to my child. My practice is connected to textile making, and to a history of women’s work with fibre. Thread is something that binds, sutures and fixes through the violence of puncturing when sewing.

Thread joins together other threads when being woven. It can connect and break apart. I want my paint brush to act like thread, bringing symbols, people and histories together and apart. I paint the thread to literally and symbolically connect objects in the paintings. Red is a colour that is synonymous with life; with desire, with love and loss and pain, and to childbirth. The red thread is the symbol that returns again and again in my work as a link and a gesture to a female lineage I am tethered to.

NM:What have you found in your meditations on motherhood? Is this work a celebration, a further contemplation, a wondering?

GC: I think the show is trying to give an honest representation of my experience of motherhood. Both celebrating it because it has delivered love and meaning into my life, but also looking at the reality of the tax it takes on energy reserves, on sleep, on space and how it monopolizes one’s identity. There is a stark before and after, and becoming a mother is like crossing a river into a foreign land, where your hormones and self is altered unutterably.

It is both a shock and thrill to discover this new person you become. Motherhood has shifted my creative practice, both physically and psychically, because of its time restraints and mental limitations. The work is an outpouring of that experience (the guilt, the shame, the legacy, the joy, the laughter, the depression, the weight). I feel it reflects both a prideful boast (look what I delivered into the world) as well as a darker look at what becoming a mother takes away from you. So much of mothering is conducted privately. I wanted to represent it in a way that is loud and honest and that pays tribute to the journey.

For enquiries please contact info@smithstudio.co.za

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It was John Green, author of Fault in Our Stars, who described whispering as “an unvoiced way of speaking”. A mode of conveying information or expressing one’s feelings that is intimate —where air passes through the larynx with enough turbulence to be audible but the vocal cords do not vibrate. 

A whisper is the beginning of an idea, the genesis of a revolution. It’s gentle enough to be passed on without difficulty, and powerful enough to be multiplied. Collective whispers present opportunities for transformative experiences, that can be manifested as empathy. Jana Terblanche

SMITH’s most recent exhibition Emphatic Whispers, investigates the potential for art to make us more empathetic beings, and transform the way we relate to other people. The exhibition (10th July – 27th July) includes works by artists: Stephen Allwright, Katherine Bull, Alka Dass, Jess Holdengarde, Claire Johnson, Strauss Louw, Sepideh Mehraban, Johno Mellish, Garth Meyer, Elsabé Milandri, Thandiwe Msebenzi, Gabrielle Raaff, Talia Ramkilawan, Amy Rusch, Shakil Solanki, Brett Charles Seiler and Marsi van de Heuvel.

I had a brief conversation about the show with Jana Terblanche, gallery manager and curator at SMITH. 

NM: How was the theme of this exhibition conceived, what inspired it? 

JT: I didn’t come from a place of inspiration per se, but rather of necessity as a response to a global numbness and empathy deficit. I’ve always had this feeling that exposure to artmaking can have a transformative effect on an individual, and wondered if that was a collective experience. 

NM: I’m interested in what happens when you put these two words that seem contradictory, next to each other: emphatic which implies force and whisper which has connotations of subtlety? 

JT:  Following on from Susan Sontag’s idea that violent images of war don’t necessarily bring us closer to the understanding of other people’s pain, I felt that artmaking that uses nuance to connect with the audience could be more transformative in helping people relate to each other. These nuances and undercurrents felt very gentle to me, like whispers. They weren’t abrasive in their delivery, yet powerful, emphatic even. I was also drawn to the tension between the words and how it brought new meaning to each of them. Thus the title was born.

NM: Can you speak to how some of the artists have chosen to respond to this question of art’s potential to make us more empathetic beings? 

JT: There are a few different strands that run through the exhibition. One of the interesting ideas is that personal stories and histories can speak to greater political and social truths. Alka Dass is an artist who uses family artefacts and meshes those with her personal diary entries, thereby illustrating how intergenerational trauma can have a concrete impact on the present. Storytelling and the power of the narrative to connect people is another thread that runs through the exhibition. Amy Rusch’s tapestries are a response to the earliest examples of human mark making. This ability of art to connect people across time and space is an example of empathy enacted. Through embracing vulnerability, Brett Charles Seiler is able to create metaphorical sutures between people. He uses frank prose and universal symbols of the queer experience to share the ups and downs of modern romance.

Jana further explains…

Artists should not bear the burden of making society better, but artistic imagination can foster human relations and help in forging empathetic connections which engenders transformative action. Art making creates a space to champion the multiplicity of stories, voices, and narratives. As much as artists connect us they also show us our differences and the challenges we face in connecting. Emphatic Whispers encourages viewers to confront their indifference and feel interconnected to beings outside of themselves. Through actively looking, there is a moment of where you can transcend who you are in order to feel other people’s pain.

For enquiries please contact info@smithstudio.co.za

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