Published May 06, 2022
It has been well over a month since we
inaugurated the exhibition Yakhal’Inkomo: The Bongi Dhlomo Collection and
its accompanying programme guest curated by Tumelo Mosaka with Sipho Mdanda and
Phumzile Twala. On Saturday 30 April, we marked International Jazz Day with an
exciting discursive and sonic programme hosted together with Future Africa’s
inaugural Artist in Residence Fellow Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang. Presented
as a reading and sonic intervention the programme focused on Dr
Mazibuko-Msimang’s research into the life of musical and beauty icon Dolly
Rathebe and featured jazz vocalist Nthabiseng Motsepe and Prof Nthabiseng
Motsemme of the University of Johannesburg. As part of the programming for Yakhal’Inkomo
we also partnered with the The Forge in order
to collectively look into the history of the literary and cultural Staffrider
magazine (1978-1993). The programme comprised of a screening of a short
2008 film by artists Khulile Nxumalo and Tracey Rose followed by a discussion
moderated by Sam Mathe featuring Staffrider founding editor and author
Dr Mothobi Mutloatse alongside New Frame Culture Editor Danielle Bowler. These
events, and many to come, serve as moments of reflection into the various
cultural histories that continue to inspire and inform the present. With a
renewed urgency inspired by the lived realities
marked by generational societal and economic imbalances that
characterise present day South Africa, through these events we are compelled to
be more intentional in demanding answers to the questions that have been posed
over time.
Taking
place from mid-May, SCENORAMA is
a curatorial project whose title combines the words ‘panorama’ and ‘scene’ in order to present a viewpoint of
shared networks of experiences, belief and knowledge systems across different
localities connected to the African continent. The month of
May is a time for us to reflect on both the meaning of Africa as a complex
ideological context that goes beyond the physical locality and the idea of
a Museum as a contact zone that
encourages trans-disciplinary collaboration across myriad vocabularies, life
experiences and critical enquiries. The Javett Art Centre at the University of
Pretoria is an a unique position to reflect on both these concepts. As an art
centre that goes beyond the traditional functions of a museum, Javett-UP
embraces the ever present potentialities of the curatorial through
experimentation and collaboration with artists and various partners. By staging
SCENORAMA as a platform for experimentation that is initiated as a place
maker/marker that is ever shifting in form, Javett-UP is interested in the
productive friction that gives birth to refreshed ideas and relationships
between objects, people, places and concepts. The project will be layered over
time allowing for situations and propositions sitting adjacent to each other to
shift or morph into each other. Both International Museum Day (18 May) and International Africa Day (25
May) presents us with the opportunities to rethink and reframe who we are and
how we share the very complex aspects of ourselves with and in response to the
ever-changing world around us. SCENORAMA
includes work by Amanda Mushate (Zim), Luana Vitra (Brazil), Manyaku Mashilo
(SA), Oscar Murillo (Colombia/UK), Nyakallo Maleke (SA), and Zara Julius (SA)
among others.