Published October 26, 2020
The ‘deleting’ of black artists artworks from South African history is a reality that defines many art institutions across the globe. Black art practitioners working in indigenous mediums and styles are almost always framed as craftspersons and developers of functional objects rather than as respected artists. Wooden sculptures, viewed from the perspective of high art institutions, are frequently seen as native cultural practices, an association that devalues their artistic properties. With the pop-up of Javett-UP’s very first drive through basement exhibition, Shaping the Grain, featuring the works of black South African sculptors, many interesting conversations arose which aimed to address this very relevant topic of the unknown artist. In true Javett-UP fashion, they dove into the hard questions with a webinar, Curation, History and Re-Membering, on 9 October. The panellists were Christopher Till, our Curatorial Director, Tshwane University of Technology lecturer in fine arts Pfunzo Sidogi and Chief Curator for Ceramics and Collections Management at UP Museums Gerard de Kamper. They considered how this framing of the unknown artist plays into modes of delegitimating the black South African artist and artistic medium.
To grasp the origin of the notion of the unknown artist, we need to first take a step back in history and trace the impacts of colonisation in South Africa. Not only has colonisation been devastating and profound, but its legacy persists in various forms throughout society, especially in the visual arts. From the earliest settler presence in the Cape Colony, art was widely identified with European culture and heritage. With the coming to power of the National Party in 1948, books on African art were mostly written in Afrikaans and from the white/western perspective. Very little space was dedicated to artists of colour and their artistic techniques. This meant that a large part of our African art history was either lost in translation or never recorded. According to Till this has resulted in an enormous devaluing of the contributions that black South African artists have made.
These early manifestations of the divide between black and white established a pattern of unequal power relationships that still resonates today. It also created the framework for rose-tinted distortions of the black experience within many artworks. According to artist and Tshwane University of Technology lecturer Sidogi, the manner in which the artworks have been interpreted and written into history has been done through a very westernised gaze. “When, for example, you start talking about rural based woodcarving, it automatically becomes ascribed as transitional art or rural art”, says Sidogi. It is critical that we try and find alternative interpretations. One way to do this is to look to black intellectualisms. “When you look to black scholars, black intellectuals, black journalist, you begin to find the hidden creative legacy and redemptive, enriching and highly enlightening interpretations of black artists whose works remain untold or remain washed away due to the legacy of apartheid in South Africa,” says Sidogi. We need to start saying that these intellectualisms do exist, and just because it has not yet been researched or spoken about, does not mean that it is completely absent.
Head of sculpture and ceramics at UP Museums Gerard de Kamper says one of the biggest challenges for curators exist in exhibiting, or rather “boxing” black artists into a larger group or global art school. The individual stories and artistic techniques that are specific to black artists disappear into a larger art grouping chosen by a curator. “This is where the whole idea of the unknown artist comes into play, as the artist often falls into a larger category or school of art,” he says. The practice of galleries to organise group exhibitions of black artists’ work has contributed towards the tendency to regard it as a collective phenomenon. This in turn falls within the conceptual framework of apartheid ideology, where supposedly lacking in individual identity, black Africans were characterised by their cohesiveness as a social group.
Artists’ works would be boxed into groups such as, for example, ‘ethnographic’, ‘rural’ or ‘township’ art. The work of black South African artists, with few exceptions, were mostly exhibited in exhibitions that were racially based, or grouped into a specific category. Successive generations of black artists (such as Dumile Feni, for example, who is also part of Javett-UP’s Collecting 101 Conversations exhibition) attempted to resist these groupings or “boxings” into which their art was placed; some through exile or studying abroad (ironically mostly in Europe), others by developing alternatives to the ways in which they created art, and still others by establishing a counter-discourse and practice. Despite this, it was perhaps inevitable that even acts of resistance would become neutralised as possessions in a white-dominated art market, or written out of history. This reductive and inadequate account is simply meant to highlight the fact that although the historical paths of black and white South African artists overlap, they have long been subjected to efforts to keep them apart.
Consequently, South African art has deep fault-lines, primarily based on race, but also based on the problematic concepts and categorisations placed on these art practices which contribute to the unknown artist. According to Till and De Kamper we need to tap into black artists language system to accurately speak about the artist’s work and its meaning. For transgenerational dialogue to blossom we must be sensitive to how we describe the works. Art can be viewed as a constant learning process as different perspectives bring different views.
Looking at the South African art world today we can start to see signs or patterns of change in the dominant historical patterns of exclusivity and inclusivity. Most noticeably, there has been a significant increase in the visibility of black artists at both the national and the international level. This visibility has been aided in part by the requirements of the new post-apartheid political dispensation. There has also been a major increase in the number of publications on South African art, particularly catalogues and monographs, most of which feature black artists. Despite this, according to Gerard de Kamper, these articles, catalogues and monographs often defeat the purpose of making the unknown artist known and helping to get the true perspective of the black artist out in the open as they are written in an academic style and for an academic audience. The result is a loss of storytelling, a loss of the different voices and the different interpretations, a loss of cultural contexts and spiritual questions.
The inconsistency between visibility of black artists, and the invisibility of their stories and experiences captured in their art that needs to be addressed. Art institutions such as the Javett-UP play a critical role in curating national memory and national history, says Till. Through facilitating intellectual learning and curatorial conversations we may yet start to write the unknown artists back into history. “The unknown artists are in a sense everywhere until they become known,” he says. It is the role of the curator to seek out these unknown artistic voices in the South African landscape.
Art plays an important role, helping us understand each other’s views and identities. In a country where we have so many different identities it is important to have all the different viewpoints in the open to fully understand and remember the history of these unknown artists and their works. These unknown artists must be appreciated for their individual talent, history and technique.