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Given the myriad of socio-political problems in our country, it is easy to imagine South Africans queuing up to see an exhibition titled, If you look hard enough you can see our future: Selections of Contemporary South African Art from the Nando’s Art Collection. However, it was at the African American Museum of Dallas that crowds lined up to view this landmark exhibition as it was the first time contemporary South African art was the subject of a major show in that US city.
The title, inspired by a scripto-visual work by Joburg-based Stephen Hobbs was intended to not only resonate with this sense of anxiety about the future that pervades many countries including the US but also the connection between African American communities and the African continent and its cultures, albeit that the contexts might be vastly different.
This notion of fostering connection, rather than highlighting differences, that the curator Laurie Anne Farrell has embraced is a refreshing stance from an American curator. So often when African art is presented outside the continent its value is perceived to lie in its ‘otherness’. But Farrell is no incidental curator for this project; she has held a fascination for South African art for some time, having done her master’s thesis on it and maintained strong links with artists based here, during her tenure at the Museum for African Art in New York and via other curatorial projects at various American museums.
This experience and Farrell’s resolve to foster connection has been to the credit of the collection from which the exhibition is based – the Nando’s art collection of which there were over 25 000 works to choose from. She has not set out to mount a classic survey of contemporary South African art, boasting all the names of the artists that tend to headline a show of this kind. There are works by the usual suspects; William Kentridge, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ratcliffe, Penny Siopis, Jane Alexander, David Goldblatt, David Koloane, Willie Bester, Sam Nthlengethwa, Claudette Schreuders etcetera and the next generation of celebrated artists from Igshaan Adams, Athi-Patra Ruga to Portia Zvavahera.
However, to counter this 'mainstream' view are many works by artists that have been producing a high standard of work for decades who might ordinarily be omitted from such an exhibition, such as Hobbs and Clive Van Den Berg, whose abstract piece, Underneath II, references life in Joburg beneath the surface – such as mining. This group would also include female artists such as Deborah Poynton, Sanell Aggenbach and Anastasia Pather, who have consistently produced solo exhibitions over the last couple of decades, yet might not make an international exhibition of South African art as they have yet to be canonised, perhaps due to certain institutional biases or perceptions of what constitutes or exemplifies South African contemporary expression. This inclusionary approach offers a more ‘democratised’ view of art from our country and is a reflection of the Nando’s collection, which embraces this ‘slice of life’ ethos given its diversity.
To assist visitors in navigating this vast range of art and expression in one exhibition, Farrell opted to divide the exhibition and works along three conventional genres – portraiture, abstraction and landscape.
Not unexpectedly, due to the heightened interest in portraiture from Africa, this section of the exhibition is the largest and probably the main feature. However, it contains works by artists you would not ordinarily associate with portraiture – such as Kentridge, who tends to suppress the identity of his subjects – opting to use human bodies to articulate universal issues – as is the case in a lino-cut work titled Walking man, which presents the titular man in motion with a tree for his head. In contrast to this are works by artists that we associate with portraiture such as the Congolese artist Zemba Luzamba, of a laughing man, and a classic photographic image by Lolo Veleko (from her Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder series) of a young person in the latest fashions posing on the streets in Joburg to a photograph by Mário Macilau presenting a man submerged under a carpet of rubbish, at a dump on the outskirts of Nairobi. In short, this arrangement of images offers a multitude of perspectives not only of South African life but representations of Africans – as refugees (via Kentridge), a new generation with optimism beaming with fresh energy and optimism (Veleleko and Luzamba) to literally drowning in the final cycle of late capitalism wrought by the West (Macilau’s image). In this way, the ‘picture’ of life in South Africa that emerges is one of stark contrasts, though this is balanced out with other more everyday scenes such as a wedding in Koloane’s Procession II and a DJ as portrayed in Ludumo Maqabuka’s Grandmixer DXT.
Farrell wanted to present “different aspects of the cycle of life” – this device helps connect audiences in Dallas to artists from South Africa but perhaps from afar it reveals that our future(s) might not necessarily be bright but certainly a mixed bag of highs and lows.
If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future: Selections of Contemporary South African Art from the Nando’s Art Collection show at the African American Museum of Dallas until August 13. View the exhibition at: https://www.nandos.com/seeourfuture/
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