Published August 31, 2022
Through our curatorial programmes at the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) we aim to challenge the imagination, inspire new ways of thinking, unsettle obsolete concepts and ‘assumed’ knowledge by unlearning together with our publics and rethinking the role an art centre can play in an ever-changing society.
SCENORAMA is a curatorial project that stages artistic positions that help us to experiment with how re-learning together can be choreographed as an active process as well as how entrenched knowledges about what an art space can be and do can be unsettled. In response to SCENORAMA, the Visual Culture Studies department (VKK) at the University of Pretoria incorporated this curatorial project into their third year curriculum for the second semester themed: Visual and Virtual Space. As part of their project, the students had to explore an exhibition that aims to offer institutional critique in setting up a discourse away from the centrality of the West to encompass a more inclusive and democratic curatorial experience.
Approximately 91 third-year students embarked on an exploration of the SCENORAMA space guided by Danielle Oosthuizen, our Education and Public Engagement Coordinator and Gillian Fleischmann, our Curatorial Assistant through a form of conversational tours over a period of four days. These tours focused on reading SCENORAMA through established curatorial discourses, specific decisions taken by artists and curators, spaces of art as sites of power and surveillance, ideologies and a critic of institutional culture.
SCENORAMA offers a non-traditional viewer experience, whereby guests can interact with artworks as they develop and change over time in the gallery space and beyond, such as the work of Nyakallo Maleke, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Paulo Nazareth, Luana Vitra, Manyaku Mashilo and Zara Julius. The fluid and non-fixed elements found in SCENORAMA allows for networks of shared experiences, belief and knowledge systems across different but connected localities to be amplified. This approach in turn strengthens the Javett-UP’s vision of creating an art centre that is a living school.
Throughout the tours, students were interested in the artist’s works and the themes evoked. They were curious about the curatorial approach and methods of display used which choreographed how their bodies and minds navigated the space. We hope that this experimental attitude to curatorial work opens up avenues for their future creative approaches as students and in their future professional practices.