A human body lies covered in what appears to be thick, solid pieces of cutout paper. The body is fully covered; barring from the knee down. The image has all the components that engender a sense of familiarity. However, something is off. One of the legs is twisted and both are lifted —suggesting that the body underneath is still breathing. This photograph (Laid, 2011) by artist Sam Vernon seems to say something significant and fateful about the body (particularly the black body) and its presence in the world.…it breathes intrigue into our imagination.
Vernon is a multi and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the connection between memory, personal narrative and identity. “Through site-specific, staged installations and urgent performances my goals are towards the production of Gothic visual art in which Black narratives are included in the expanse of the genre,” Vernon states in an interview with African Digital Art.
Vernon goes beyond the confines of a single medium by combining drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptural components— transmuting their form from two dimensional to three dimensional works which become elastic and nonconforming. Her means of expression are constantly evolving as she continuously moves from illustrations, digital, performance and back.
Vernon’s digital prints, drawings and collages are typically black and white, perhaps an indication of an enhanced awareness of the past. The work is not always easy to process, and yet it remains vivid and clear. Through Vernon’s works, we travel through time towards the vast depth of her experiences. She describes an understanding of the past as a necessary means towards a better understanding of the self in the creation of the future.
Despite having a visual language that is difficult to pin down —with elements of abstraction, patterns and human-like figures —Vernon’s voice remains strong. This voice is further amplified by the specificity in the symbolism used to confront her subjects. “The active ‘ghosting‘ of an image, copying and multiplying the original, subtlety exploits the notion of a pure identification of black and white and signifies the essentialism of symbolic meaning and all its associations.”
Through her practice Vernon deconstructs and redefines narratives that inform memories and collective history through the lens of race and gender. Through her most recent show Rage Wave with G44: Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, Vernon presented an ambitious exhibition bringing together images, photocopies, drawings and prints to reflect on post-coloniality, racial, sexual and historic memory. She has also presented works at Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, among many others.
Vernon’s work, with all its layers of complexity, remain a critical part of moving the conversation on black narratives forward. Her works have a sense of timelessness, where the past and the present seem to merge….perhaps because notions and conceptions of race and gender underpinning the work also have a sense of timelessness. Even as time passes, the trauma of the violent past continues to haunt.
Alt_Cph is an independent exhibition bringing together selected contemporary artist-run and alternative exhibition spaces across Europe. This year there is a dedication to presenting new performance art.
Beginning today and taking place at FABRIKKEN for Kunst og Design in Copenhagen, Alt_Cph 18 will continue until Sunday. The idea for the exhibition is that it will be in constant development throughout its three day presence. Each performance will leave an artefact or mark behind, as an acknowledgement of what took place. In this way the exhibition will have various artistic components that will culminate into a complete, frozen form by the ending of the exhibition on Sunday evening. Tying the displayed content together is Alt_Cph 18’s design – a giant metal grid and bright pink floor making up the body of a large living sculpture.
Art platform 1.1 will be participating in this year’s exhibition in collaboration with art collective CUSS Group. The collective will be presenting their new performance Why Die to go to Heaven – an open-ended and surreal work that re-stages one of the most iconic camera tricks employed by Vukani Ndebele, a Durban based filmmaker who specialises in lo-fi horror movies.
In conjunction with the exhibition is a programme of talks, lectures and seminars presented by artists and theorists with a theoretical focus.
“We think we are liberated by individualism, but in reality we’ve given up so much power. People are so caught up in the nuances of their own personal realm that they’ve lost real civic relationships with one another. We’ve lost that collective power.” – Andrea Zittel
Recent PPC Imaginarium winner Chris Soal is back from his residency and presents to Johannesburg art lovers his latest body of work in the form of a solo exhibition. Orbits of Relating is Chris’s first solo exhibition as well as his first participation in a show since graduating with an Honours degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand.
‘Climb into someone else’s skin and walk around in it’
His journey with NO END Contemporary began early in 2017 when the gallery invited him to be a part of the group show, What’s In It For You. Since this initial opportunity Chris has exhibited in three other group shows by the gallery and was one of their featured artist at the 2017 Turbine Art Fair.
Orbits of Relating has been in stages of development for over a year and a half, the artist shares with me. The show’s artworks which consists in its near entirety of thousands of toothpicks strategically packed to morph into shape, texture and sculptural works were all born from an initial idea that was formulated in a restaurant.
‘To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep’
“I was sitting at a restaurant with some friends and picked up the toothpick container at the end of the meal, and the pattern in which the toothpicks had arranged themselves, fascinated me and I took a photo.” Albeit his initial fascination by the pattern the toothpicks fell into that day in the restaurant, Chris dismissed toothpicks as a material to create art with. This early dismissal stemmed from the disposable life of a toothpick, usually serving one purpose in our society and thereafter immediately discarded – “…that little voice said, “no one cares about toothpicks.”
Using the group show 2K with NO END, as a platform for early experimentation with the medium he created two small toothpick based works. Impressed by what the medium had to offer, Chris continued creating with toothpicks.
“It’s ironic because my initial intention was to replicate the specific pattern which I saw that day in the restaurant, however I failed. I couldn’t get the toothpicks to sit the way I wanted and in that failure something spectacular emerged.”
Chris’ words to eager art supporters wanting to attend the exhibition is that they should not come with expectations because “If they come expecting grandeur they’ll leave disappointed. My work utilises debris and objects on the margins of our society, and it hinges on the fact that these objects have become invisible to our eyes once they serve their purpose.”
Chris’ work relies on audience engagements, conceptual and methodological cornerstones to his practise. In a world of much superficiality and impersonal interaction he saw an opportunity to create work that was visceral, engaging and acts to affirm his viewer’s presence and existence.
On the topic of the titles for his artworks Chris explains that his aim was to give the abstract or formal work that he creates a relatable nature. He regards his titles as windows and/or entry points into his work. It acts as an opening for his viewer into something more than what the eye can perceive.
‘Awkward moments in a potentially romantic encounter’
Chris’ work which has been called political in nature can be regarded as such as it addresses “polis” derived from politics and meaning citizenry. His work acts as an affirmation to his viewers that they exist and have value. This is communicated through the use of materials and titles in particular, that they exist in relation to others. Chris explains this as being a part of a complex system of aesthetic producers and consumers.
Aesthetic and political value for the works are derived from Chris’ deliberate use of capitalism driven debris. The point of relation that is encouraged with his work exists between his viewers and themselves to the work of art, and through material transcendence that goes beyond its singular shape. “These are simply inroads for further critical contemplation, not a message which can be written down in literary form…”.
Orbits of Relating will be on display at NO END Contemporary from 24 May – 23 June 2018.
A cocoon of carefully interwoven fabric. Shoes, scarves, shirts, pants, skirts, jackets – every item of clothing a person owns morphed to make a human-sized sculpture. Why is that? Because there is a human being inside this heap of clothing.
Canadian photographer Libby Oliver is spellbound by the power that clothing has to simultaneously reveal and veil human identity and desire. Soft Shells is a visual exploration of this susceptibility to portray our personalities through dress and at the same time to use wardrobe to hide our insecurities from the world.
To create this body of work Libby buried her subjects in every item of clothing that they own. At first glance, the viewer might perceive these cloth sculptures as laundry heaps. Upon closer inspection, however, the viewer will be able to identify small sections of human flesh in the form of foreheads, hands and peeping eyes escaping from the binding clothing stacks of scarves, pants and blouses.
In her artist’s statement, Libby expresses “This work arises from my interest in artificiality, visual power relationships and indexing a person through their belongings. Through this series, I aim to explore the tension point between a person’s curated individuality and my personal manipulation of their aesthetic. Soft Shells speaks of human vulnerability, trust, power and control relations of visual interpretation.”
Libby aspires to travel with her ongoing project to various locations in order to broaden the representation of identities, cultures and clothing. For more of her work check out her Instagram.
Throughout the history of art, artists have appreciated the versatility that fabric possesses. Viewed as clothing, skin and a source of identity, it can be manipulated and molded into an object (or subject) with conceptual depth. It allows for the creation of soft sculptures, or be used as aids in performance, but does not deny artists the ability to project a sense of hardness, scale or visual weight. Textiles can also be used as a presentation of and reflection on colonialism and global trade, as with the work of UK-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare with his investigations of political and social histories. Fabric also offers a way to think about personal histories, as with the case of Accra-based artist Serge Attukwei Clottey‘s work My Mother’s Wardrobe.
‘My Mother’s Wardrobe’ by Serge Attukwei Clottey
Clottey’s work generally examines the power of everyday objects. However, the above mentioned work is potent in the way that it gives an avenue for thinking about the use and signification that fabric offers artists and viewers. Through this work he explored the connection that fabric can create between mothers and their children. In this work he used performance as a way to interrogate gender roles along with notions of family, ancestry and spirituality. This was a personal work inspired by the death of his mother, and the performance unpacked the concept of materiality with the intention of honouring women as the collectors and custodians of cloth that serve as signifiers of history and memory. Clottey presents a vulnerability in the way that he brings across his own experiences, while inviting viewers to think about their own personal connections to his subject matter.
While is broader practice involves photography, installation, sculpture and performance, this work highlights the significance of fabric when thinking about personal and collective cultures, histories and intimacies.
Artwork by Turiya Magadlela
Johannesburg-based artists Turiya Magadlela uses fabric as her primary medium, cutting, stitching and stretching it over wooden frames. Her use of commonly found fabrics, such as pantyhose and uniforms brings the past life of the fabric into the exhibition space, where it’s very presence creates animated associations in the minds of viewers. Her use of familiar fabrics allows her work to oscillate between abstract art and a collection of memories interwoven with articulations of experiences of womanhood, motherhood and narratives from Black South African history.
Looking at the work of Clottey and Magadlela the significance of fabric as a container of history and memories becomes clear. Its physical and conceptual malleability highlights its ability to be a tool for preservation, reflection and identity.
“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
The School of Anxiety (SoA) is positioned as a collaborative space of (un)learning. Conceptually derived from psychological notions of ‘anxiety’ and references the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s text The Concept of Dread (1844). However, it extends beyond the space of literary and conceptual theory into artistic practice. The project facilitator and Uganda-based curator and writer, Moses Serubiri believes that ‘subjective anxieties’ relate to the societal notion and process of ‘becoming someone’ He writes, “this project is about how to essentially refuse to take on the guilt of becoming a subject: whether this is a civilized, tribalized, politicized, and radicalized subject.”
The first iteration of the SoA took place in Johannesburg during September last year. After an immersive experience of exploring spaces like ROOM gallery, Keleketla! and the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum, a public panel entitled What to do with anxiety? ensued. It manifested as part of the Berlin Biennale’s public program I’m not who you think I’m not. The project positions itself as a space for (un-)learning, centred on the experience of subjective anxieties and the processes of “becoming”.
Portrait of Nyakallo Maleke by Papa Shabani
His praxis explores “meta-narratives and scholarly practices” – transcending the perceived boundaries of art. It often probes the activation of a network of people, focusing on forming conversation with those engaged in the process. “I think of my work as trying to engage beyond the field of art and with practices and disciplines that challenge our current understanding of art.” The participating artists include Awuor Onyango, Nyakallo Maleke and Sanyu Kiyimba-Kisaka. Their inter-disciplinary approaches span video, sculpture, theatre and poetry.
The second event was hosted in Nairobi last month. The workshop was located in Uhuru Park – often a site for national rituals. Moses describes the dynamic tension between opposition and pressure groups as visible in the proximity to Nyayo House – government buildings and a detention centre, notoriously known as the ‘Nyayo House torture chambers’. In 1992, a group of Kenyan mothers staged a hunger strike to resolve the release of their sons who had been detained as political prisoners and protest for the restoration of democratic practice.
Portrait of Sanyu Kiyimba-Kisaka by Zahara Abdul
This historical event was the foundation for the public performance and second SoA iteration. Moses reflects that, “it was crucial that no-trace of the performance was left, because we were not aiming at re-authoring the actual space, but rather pursue symbolic gestures that would allow us to deepen our dialogue with historic anxiety.”
He describes the synchronicities between each workshop as conceptually tied to an exploration of autopoiesis, mourning, and obsessional doubt, as well as, “becoming immersed into a whole new environment. For both iterations we have spent majority of the time visiting places, going to museums, talking to curators, artists, writers, and cooking and shopping. The project is as much about learning as it is about unlearning.” Not being bound to the pressure of giving art in exchange for some kind of financial remuneration, “we have been able to really have meaningful exchanges that avoid the system of regurgitating and reproducing oneself into a brand of some kind. I think that the SoA members have stepped out of their usual practices to engage other ways of ‘doing’ that have emerged through a conversation.”
A third iteration and extension of SoA will take place in July 2018 during the 10th Berlin Biennale.
Ruth Angel Edwards is a multimedia artist whose work explores the communication of ideology through pop culture, drawing from mainstream and subcultural youth movements both past and present. Within these, she looks at the ways audio and visual content are used to manipulate an audience and to disseminate information. This is especially apparent in her exhibition High Life/Petrification shown at the À CÔTÉ DU 69, which marked the end of her residency in Los Angeles, CA. In this exhibition, social detritus collected from the location reveals a mythologised Venice Beach as a “ritual site of pilgrimage, a space where diverse subcultural histories continue to make it a mecca for fans of alternative histories as well as touristic voyeurs.”
Feminism, gender, collectivity and commodification are recurring themes. In particular, this brings to mind Edwards’ exhibition Enema Salvatore, held in Turin at the end of another art residency, showing new work at the Almanac Inn. The work questions the binary structures of western culture, the duality of good and bad. A cycle of ingestion, consumption, digestion, purification – and then finally – release, all explored through and within her own female body, whilst drawing external parallels to the “wellness/feel good” food industry. Hedonism, spectacle and rebellion are deconstructed and re-formed to create communicative and insightful immersive works.
Edwards has been expanding on these themes in her most recent exhibition Wheel of the Year! EFFLUENT PROFUNDAL ZONE! commissioned by the Bonington Gallery as the first exhibition of 2018. An immersive installation invited the viewer to consider the inescapable cycles of waste and decay, a by-product of all our consumption, personal or material. Drawing clever parallels between overlapping ecologies – “from the futile pursuit of personal purification and ‘clean living’ to the increasingly rapid turnover of cultural content in the media and popular consciousness, to the wider perspective of the waste which is polluting our oceans, and threatening our very existence”– Edward’s makes the observation that the only difference is that of differing scale, and utilises art’s ability to evoke empathy and re-orient our often very narrow-minded subjectivities.
Using video, audio, sculpture, performance and printed media, subcultures and social debris are historicised, tracing their trajectories and examining the wider socio-economic environments which give rise to them. Edwards traces the complex symbiotic relationship between the underground and the mainstream, while exposing their failures and flaws as well as any under-celebrated histories and latent positive potential. Edwards continues to explore personal cycles of consumption and waste, natural functions that are transformed and inescapably politicised as they connect with global capitalist economies.
Ruth Angel Edwards studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and currently lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally at Arcadia Missa Auto Italia South East, Tate Modern (London), FACT, Royal Standard (Liverpool), Human Resources, (Los Angeles) and MEYOHAS Gallery, (New York).
Be sure to check out her website to see more of her work.
Thinking back to the creative industry a number of years ago, creatives of all types generally operated within a specific field and seldom dabbled outside of its borders, unless they were of course, “against the grain”. It is my opinion that institutions of higher learning beg of their young students to specialize in one medium, and to be proficient in this medium exclusively. Multidisciplinary crafts are hardly ever encouraged. In a world of rapid change and instant gratification, the demands of clients ask more of creatives today. I state this as currently there are many stylists who have become proficient in an array of creative expressions to such an extent that they have the capability to wear every hat needed for the execution and completion of a project. We spoke to three of South Africa’s trailblazing all-rounders about their multifaceted creative exploits.
Anees, known for his designs, fashion label and styling, is becoming well versed in the medium of photography. He has set the tone and image (as both digital pixels viewed on electronic screens, and a physical dresscode) for what South African youths look like. Young & Lazy and the Corner Store have assisted in creating an image of our youth that is more versatile and heterogeneous. Looking through the duplicity of lookbooks created by this creative auteur it is almost like seeing Larry Clark’s 1995 ‘Kids’ in still form; yet unlike ‘Kids’ filled with messages of doom, Anees’ message is one of positivity – a celebration of youth.
At the start of Anees’ solo venture he only occupied the position of designer and handed over his collections to stylists and photographers to create lookbooks for him. Regarding it as an act of “letting go” to another stylist, he did not feel capable of styling at that early stage.
Photography by Anees Petersen
“Eventually, I made more collections and I started feeling that by ‘letting go’, the vision that I had, became watered down or changed…” Anees’ persuasion to be more hands on in this regard came from a sentiment that each stylist and photographer inadvertently added their own signature to a specific shoot – a style that he didn’t necessarily want to portray.
From there, Anees took it upon himself to style his designs and worked closely with photographers, making sure he took the lead in the art direction. It took Anees a while to step in behind the lens despite having experience with photographing on a point and shoot.
Photography by Anees Petersen
A boost of confidence intercepted when Anees needed to do some product shots with models and he could not find a photographer for the job at hand. Taking the leap, he photographed the set of images himself. Public review of his images was exceedingly in his favour.“It’s something that I really enjoy. It’s almost [at] a point where I would stop designing to become a photographer, if I could be a photographer.”
His process has become a union of image creator and designer pushing the focal points of his designs for consumers – this differentiating factor is what sets him and his deliverables apart. His style verges on blandness without any frill, lace or prettiness – yet these images should not be construed as unappealing. In fact, they draw you in and mesmerize their viewer.
Gabrielle is a name so embedded in Cape Town’s creative culture that it’s hard to speak about the scene and leave her name out of the conversation. Known for her immense talent as a stylist her hand brings styling to the foreground of any image. But Gabrielle does so much more than styling. A former student of Michaelis school of Fine Arts, she is also a producer, creative director and photographer.
Curious about when her creative disciplines started intersecting, Gabrielle tells me that the process already happened during her school years when she started a clothing business with a friend. Here she took on a chameleon like role of a photographer, stylist and co-director for their lookbooks.
Image courtesy of Gabrielle Kannemeyer
She unpacks her creative process as one that relies on documenting experiences. Her documentation takes the tangible form of drawing, creating mood boards and writing her ideas as they come to her. “Most of my work starts as something I see in my mind’s eye…” She shares that her process is ever changing and doesn’t necessarily take place in a linear pattern, stressing the importance of collaboration in her practice.
The Gabrielle Kannemeyer aesthetic can be defined as one with strong styling and simplified backgrounds. As a child growing up in the Northern Cape area she explored many landscapes which influenced her. She later moved back to Cape Town. She shares with me her strong belief that South Africans should tell our stories in the spaces that we are native to.
Image courtesy of Gabrielle Kannemeyer
The singularity of her styling practice arose from Gabrielle’s ability to recognize that what she wanted to bring across is something that she had not seen in the glossy pages of fashion magazines. “…No one was layering garments in a sculptural way, or in a way I thought was interesting.”
She explains that she thinks of the human body as a sculpture on which silhouettes can be changed to no end by adding elements or tying cloth and fabric to limbs. Inspiration also lends itself via the interpretation of clothes within our country she tells me. “I am incredibly inspired by the individuals I dress / collaborate with and it excites me to see the interaction they have with the silhouettes I build and all of that in relation to the spaces they are shot in is something I continue to explore today.”
Chloe works as both a stylist and a creative director honing her skills at Vega where she studied Graphic Design and Branding Communications, and later completed a short course in Personal Styling at Fedisa. Growing up in Durban as an only child, she cultivated a vivid imagination that has carried over into her adult life; spilling into her creative practice.
Her artistic interests came at a young age and was met with a similar fixation with dress up. Rummaging through her mother’s closet she would put together outfits that she called “characters” and insistently begged for an audience to admire her various ensembles.
Image courtesy of Chloe Andrea
“I started dreaming about my label in high school where I’d often sew myself up a top to wear out for the night. Later, launching my first collection in college called Ramble, which was completely ridiculous and outer space themed. My friend Nicci modelled the outfits, with my cousin behind the camera. It was then I realised I had discovered a new interest – the photograph.”
In the world Chloe creates for her clients framing takes a classical stance and every element within a picture frame is carefully thought out and placed. Her hand is known for its versatility and that is what she believes makes her projects distinct. From beautiful white on white to edgy pairings each project translates into human beings draped in such a way that they themselves become human artworks. “I’m inspired by creating characters and telling stories about them through fabric and images.”
Image courtesy of Chloe Andrea
Chloe tells me that her working in Nigeria has been her favoured project up to date. “Working in Nigeria – you learn a lot about self-identity and where you fit in. It’s also very challenging working in a new place where you don’t speak the languages. That being said, what a beautiful, colourful place! Everyday people rely more on local tailors to create garments for them rather than commercial retailers. It’s quite special.”
When it came to advice for young creatives with similar career aspirations, Chloe had the following to say, “The best advice I ever got was from Caroline Olavarietta. ‘Assist. Assist. Assist.’ I’d say, don’t chase fame and earn your stripes.”
Developing her skill set to encompass that of a fashion designer as well Chloe looks forward to a year of growth. She will continue creating garments for her own shoots as a costume designer while pushing the bill towards launching a full-time fashion label. She is currently being mentored in pattern making by a fashion designer.
Allana Clarke is a conceptual artist born in 1987 originally from Trinidad and Tobago. Her practice is expressed through sculpture, video, performance and installation work. The residencies that can be marked off on her list at present are The Vermont Studio Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and the Lighthouse Works. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Skowhegan fellowship, the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship MICA, the Peter W. Brooke Fellowship as well as the Vermont Studio Civil Society Fellowship. Adding to her accomplishments, Allana received the Franklin Furnace grant in 2015. Completing her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA, she currently resides in Brooklyn New York.
The artist branches out the reach of her investigation into the formation of power politics as an authoritative edifice and an abstraction through her selected choice of mediums. Her practice is enthused by conceptual information largely chosen from colonial and post-colonial theory, philosophy, art history and gender studies. Her work is however not solely informed by these texts as she intertwines personal narrative within this theoretical context.
On Allana’s website she shares a statement bringing to light certain declarations that she outlines as ultimate truths. She expresses therein that all people are identified and affected by our cultural group personae. She continues to say that discourse diction is inherently problematic. Her statement goes on to say that all discourses are totalizing structures that engage cultural group identity and push various individual nuanced entities together. Lastly, she states that there is no discourse that encompasses the cultural group of women of colour that exist within the Caribbean and American context.
“The primary discourses that they/we/I could fit into are ‘Feminism’ and ‘Black Liberation’ movements. They/we/I do and have not fully been articulated within either of these spaces. ‘Black Liberation’ theories, while giving the perception that “black” is inclusive of both male and female, actually focus on the black male as sole agent and his agenda to gain equal citizenship with the white male allowing him to fully participate within the capitalist system and equally gain the benefits of said system. While feminism, is focused on the white female, using liberalism to negate the experiences of non-white females.”
Allana’s work is thus centred around this point of realization. She asks the question of whether it is possible to assert her agency while acknowledging inherent antagonism? Which leads her to question if it possible to do so while not participating in hegemonic practices. Or if it is possible to create a non-totalizing identity structure? Allana’s work serves to investigate these concerns and question the way in which human beings identify as well as the way in which they are identified and is a result of hegemonic power structures.
Still from ‘Propositions of Questionable Intent Part I’
Bulbous and sickly-looking forms installed at The Point of Order during the Situation exhibition in 2016 both enticed and disgusted viewers. Having encountered the work of emerging artist, Kyra Papé for a while within the Joburg art scene, I decided it was time to have a chat and try to get a deeper understanding of a studio process which puts her as the artist at a rather serious health risk.
Could you elaborate on your use of sugar as a material/medium that fuels your practice?
My initial engagement with sugar was a rather intuitive response while making. I was busy making a sculpture in the kitchen, using a blowtorch, and I decided to grab the pot of sugar. It has been a part of my process since. Its complexity in meaning in my practice however has developed considerably over the years. Sugar, as a material, embodies a deeply personal and vulnerable corporeal relationship that I have with food. At the root of it all I have an extremely sensitive body with numerous allergies and intolerances. My very first allergy was and remains to this day, lactose, the sugar found in milk. Over the years, my body’s increasingly become more vulnerable to other materials, namely: sugar – (Lactose, fructose and sucrose), dairy, gluten and sulphonamides. Sugar abjects me, my relationship with it is violent and aggressive yet, I am obsessed with it. I am fascinated by it as a material in all its facets and continuously explore its alien existence with my body on a daily basis.
‘ISL01’ 2017 by Kyra Papé
As an artist working with sugar, once the work has been made and is exhibited outside of yourself, what sort of contexts are you placing the works in and what sort of titles are given to them? I’m trying to get an understanding of what sort of inroads you give to a viewer to understand your work within the broader context of culture and society, apart from the particular narrative you have personally with sugar?
The main inroad I use is through installation and the relation of the works physically to the viewer. I allow the viewer to touch my sculptures. I find their disturbance of the clean white spaces quite intriguing. As my sculptures are messy and sticky, often an unwanted aspect in a gallery space, I find them to be absorbing of people’s need to touch in a ‘no touching’ space. The sensorial aspect of the sugar in my odd creations invites the viewer into the space of the work however remains repulsive to them simultaneously. The viewer’s own embodiment prompts a push and pull with the forms through the uncanny relation between themselves and the forms.
To be a ‘child’ again, desperate to touch this ‘thing’ that you are told you are not allowed to but are now actually allowed to, draws me in as a maker into understanding the role of material. While the works are rooted in a complex personal embodiment, sugar is a material understood cross-culturally to carry meaning in varied contexts, although I never overtly state that the works are sugar, it is always in the labelling of the works. Essentially I am through my own personal avenue of exploration, inviting the viewer to experience and explore the complexity of sugar, nevertheless it is their individual experiences of the sculptures and prints that carry the most nuanced meaning for me.
‘Untitled (Conversation)’ 2016 by Kyra Papé
What has your research component in your Master’s focused on and how has that had an impact on your studio practice?
My masters focuses on material in relation to sculpture and printmaking. I am engaging with the validity of the use of an autobiographical and auto-ethnographical approach as a means of research through the production of a creative body of work. I am also exploring the role of the material, the object and the thing, and how their existences challenge boundaries. I have situated my focus on the process of making less. It is vital for me that the sugars impermanence leaves the sculptures in states of flux, never really being complete. The research component of my work has challenged me to be more critical of my own presence in the making and to claim the personal as a necessary avenue in why I do what I do. Vulnerability is not so easily faced and the theoretical process in relation to the work has allowed me as a maker to explore on a deeper level the nuances of my making.
What do you see the relationship between drawing and sculpture to be in your own practice and what sort of role do your drawings have?
The drawings are a fairly new exploration in my practice and I am still engaging with their role in terms of my sculptures. Practically, they are exploring further the behaviour of ink and sugar when the boundaries are disturbed that I have been engaging with. The main pull for me at the moment however is the alien-like quality of the forms. I am intrigued by how their delicacy invites the viewer intimately into the drawing, yet maintains a peculiarity.
So what is Surrealism and what is Expressionism in art? Surrealism was defined by André Bretonin the Surrealist manifesto of 1924 as “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” Surrealism focuses thus on an intuitive processes of creation not meant to be an accurate depiction of the world and is not concerned with what is regarded as beautiful but is centred around the functioning of thought. Surrealism often relies on alternative realities and dreams, and the psychoanalytic. Expressionism can be explained as follows, “Expressionist artists tried to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. The artists manipulated their subjects’ appearance to express what cannot be easily seen.” Here I look at three South African femme artists who might fall into these classifications. I discuss why they might fall into these classifications, as well as whether these classifications are still of relevance today.
Marlene Steyn is a Capetonian artist who obtained her Master of Fine Art degree in 2014 in London from the Royal College of Art. Her immersive installation focused work creates an experience nurturing an eagerness for her constructed surreal worlds. Her idiosyncratic motifs morph through unnerving established notions surrounding themes such as historical art narratives, psychoanalytic theory and popular tokens from modern culture. With repetition and irregular combinations, Marlene creates eerie themes surrounding her work. Her symbolic visual language consisting of fried eggs, braided ropes of hair and the androgynous figure, molds into one as the key element of her practice.
Marlene has a peculiar ability to make violence playful in her work. When looking purely at the visual aspects of her art it can be described as disjointed body parts, animated features separated from faces, frying pans, fragments and distortions. The human body is depicted in her work as vulnerable, nude and disfigured with a strange beauty. This body represented in her surreal world seems to be provoked by various objects and sinister beasts. At the same time the work evokes a sense of happiness.
‘Aura hour with cucumber’ 2016 by Marlene Steyn
Some examples of pieces that display these mutilated bodies is ‘Ponytails Continued’ – a set of legs without a torso and a floating head with no neck as well as ‘In My other half’s other half’ – a single large blue eye skewered through a large sculpture peering up at the eyebrow above.
Marlene’s work can be considered to be surrealist in nature as she works with symbolism, a dreamlike, constructed reality and is concerned with psychoanalytic theory.
The next femme artist that falls into my list is Tash Brown. Tash is a Johannesburg-based painter who is currently completing her studies at WITS. I had an interview with her to see where she fits into the framework.
Tash expresses that her work can be regarded as surreal but that it is her reality. She prefers not to have her work tied down to a specific classification. Her preference is to let other people interpret her paintings, “A classmate once looked at a piece of mine and said it felt like a man had just killed someone but that was okay because his mom made him feel like it wasn’t his fault. I find that statement far richer than I could ever find my paintings.”
Tash has been known to venture from the traditional canvas to Perspex. Her colour pallet consists of pastels with exaggerated use of yellow and pink, “it is easy to turn them from something little-girl-pretty into vomit and vagina skin.”
‘Everything you’re not supposed to be’ 2017 by Tash Brown
As subject matter these grotesque haunting figures represent the artists, her lover, her family, her celebrity crushes and her dog. It is both strange and interesting that Tash would consciously choose to portray her loved ones (except for the dog, he always looks good) with such harshness. Tash’s surreal world is frightening, I dare say, but at the same time it depends on how you look at it. Tash doesn’t care if you believe that her work is self-indulgent trash. She doesn’t make work as a social commentary and in fact seems to just make art for herself instead of having some deeper meaning in mind.
Tash explains that the titles of her works come to her in the sense of automatic writing, when she finishes a painting she writes down whatever comes to mind. “I want the titles to be as vague as the works.”
When asked about the voyeuristic tone of her work Tash expresses that she couldn’t help but add a bizarre sexual undertone to her paintings. She believes that it explains why her work has a tendency to make people feel uncomfortable, yet fascinated. “I like to change a boy into a girl and cut off their lips and put it on a spoon and make the spoon have sex with a sardine and then force people to face it like maybe that is a spoon having sex with sardine, but maybe I like it.”
Her favourite work, ‘Everything you’re not supposed to be’, belongs to a larger series that was derived from screenshots of films she admires. “On the day it was painted I had just finished watching Tom at the Farm, a strange French sexual thriller. This painting is Tom and it’s also me watching Tom.”
‘Afterward, I’m going to have you all in tears’ 2017 by Tash Brown
Despite the fact that Tash doesn’t like to classify her work it is evident that it has surreal as well as expressionist tendencies. Surrealism can be seen as she creates an alternative warped reality with haunting figures and her work flows rather automatically. As was often associated with the Surrealist movement, Tash explains her work in a peculiar nonsensical manner, yet another characteristic. Her work leans to expressionism as she is clearly depicting a certain emotional and psychological state within her works.
Our last femme under the magnifying glass is Johannesburg artist Yolanda Mazwana, whose paintings depict the everyday, human elements in her life. Yolanda has confirmed that neo-expressionism is an influence for her raw, enthralling portraits.
Yolanda’s work is centered around mental illness, popular culture, phobias, relationships and storytelling. The figures in her work are sometimes disjointed as you can see a bodiless head floating in one of her paintings. It is clear to me that Yolanda has an interest in capturing the emotional states of her subjects in her work and that her work is not an accurate depiction of reality. Instead, appearances have been altered to show what cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Artwork by Yolanda Mazwana
Marlene, Tash and Yolanda’s work all share the common trait of either broken up human bodies or strange hybrid human forms. Marlene and Tash’s work are centered around an alternate reality. Marlene’s work is the closest to surrealism to me as she often makes use of symbolism in her work. All three these artists share very similar colour pallets in their work and are not interested in giving an accurate depiction of the world. Tash and Yolanda are both interested in the psychological states of their subjects. Tash’s work could be considered to fall in between both surrealism and expressionism, while Yolanda’s work is much more expressionist. Are these classifications important however? Perhaps. Perhaps not. As both Surrealism and Expressionism are definitely not practiced as it was intended with their formations. People sometimes refer to neo-surrealism and neo-expressionism now. I do however feel like we are living in a time where artists no longer feel a need to be bound to a specific classification and choose to work more freely.
German/Ghanaian artist living and working in Accra, Zohra Opoku captivates viewers using multiple mediums including installation, photography, sculpture and video. Her thematic investigations revolve around Ghanaian traditions, spirituality and family lineage and how they relate to self-authorship and her hybrid identity. Material culture often forms the foundation of these investigations, with textiles woven together in how these thematic investigations manifest.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
The images that she prints on fabric speak to the intimacy and history that textiles can come to contain. In her series Queenmothers 2016, the centring of female figures is a reflection on matriarchal systems and women as creators of a sense of community among people.
Her more recent work Unraveled Threads 2017, comprised of screenprints on cotton, canvas & linen, connects to her exploration of her family lineage. Opoku did not know much about her father or her Ghanaian heritage during her childhood. In Unraveled Threads, she uses the kente cloth as a way to enhance her family history. Kente cloth varies in design, colour and pattern, each carrying stories and meaning. While the cloth is worn by different kinds of people today, it is historically associated with royalty and sacredness. It is believed that the origins of this woven cloth is that two farmers came across a spider. Amazed by the way the spider creates its web, they tried to imitate thus creating the kente design.
“Identity is always, for me, based in textile,” Opoku explains in an interview with OkayAfrica.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
The stories and proverbs associated with each kente design makes this form of woven cloth a carrier of ethnic history. Quite fittingly, Opoku was inspired by the kente cloth that she found in her late father’s wardrobe as the canvas on which to present her father as an Asante leader, as well as to print images of herself and her siblings. Here she not only pays homage to a father she barely knew, but also embraces the significance of kente as threaded history. This allows her to engage with her Ghanaian roots as well as her familial history. She explores her experiences growing up in the West, and what it means to confront blackness and Africa as an artist later in her life.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
