Public Art in South Africa

Description

How does South Africa deal with public art from its years of colonialism and apartheid? How do new monuments address fraught histories and commemorate heroes of the struggle? Across South Africa, statues commemorating figures such as Cecil Rhodes have provoked heated protests, while new works commemorating icons of the liberation struggle have also sometimes proved contentious. In this lively volume, Kim Miller, Brenda Schmahmann and an international group of contributors explore how works in the public domain in South Africa serve as a forum in which important debates about race, gender, identity and nationhood play out. Examining statues and memorials as well as performance, billboards, and other temporal modes of communication, the authors of these essays consider the implications of not only the exposure, but also erasure of events and icons from the public domain. Revealing how public visual expressions articulate histories and memories, they explore how such works may serve as a forum in which tensions surrounding race, gender, identity, or nationhood play out.

Introduction: Engaging with Public Art in South Africa, 1999–2015 / Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann
Acknowledgments

Part 1: Negotiating Difficult Histories
1. A Janus-like Juncture: Reconciling Past and Present at the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park / Elizabeth Rankin
2. A Thinking Stone and Some Pink Presidents: Negotiating Afrikaner Nationalist Monuments at the University of the Free State / Brenda Schmahmann
3. The Mirror and the Square—Old Ideological Conflicts in Motion: Church Square Slavery Memorial / Gavin Younge

Part 2: Defining and Redefining Heroes
4. Public Art as Political Crucible: Andries Botha's Shaka and Contested Symbols of Zulu Masculinity and Culture in Kwazulu-Natal / Liese van der Watt
5. Mandela's Walk and Biko's Ghosts: Public Art and the Politics of Memory in Port Elizabeth's City Center / Naomi Roux
6. Commemorating Solomon Mahlangu: The Making and Unmaking of a "Struggle" Icon / Gary Baines

Part 3: Erasures and Ruins
7. The Pain of Memory and the Violence of Erasure: Real and Figural Displays of Female Authority in the Public Sphere / Kim Miller
8. Transgressive Touch: Ruination, Public Feeling, and the Sunday Times Heritage Project / Duane Jethro

Part 4: Ephemeral Projects
9. Public Art, Troubling Tropes: An Unsettling Intervention in Cape Town/ Shannen Hill
10. Unsettling Ambivalences and Ambiguities in Mary Sibande's Long Live the Dead Queen Public Art Project / Leora Farber
11. Unsanctioned: The Inner-City Interventions of Julie Lovelace / Karen von Veh
12. Rage against the State: Political Funerals and Queer Visual Activism in Post-apartheid South Africa / Kylie Thomas
13. Tell-Tale Signs: Unsanctioned Graffiti Interventions in Post-apartheid Johannesburg / Matthew Ryan Smith
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• African
• History of art
• African people
• Art

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253030108
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

PUBLIC ART IN SOUTH AFRICA
AFRICAN EXPRESSIVE CULTURES
Patrick McNaughton, editor
Associate editors
Catherine M. Cole
Barbara G. Hoffman
Eileen Julien
Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Elisha Renne
Z. S. Strother
PUBLIC ART IN SOUTH AFRICA
Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents
Edited by
KIM MILLER and BRENDA SCHMAHMANN
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Kim (Kimberly A.), editor, author. | Schmahmann, Brenda, 1960- editor, author.
Title: Public art in South Africa : bronze warriors and plastic presidents / edited by Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series: African expressive cultures | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023154 (print) | LCCN 2017024194 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253030108 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253029591 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253029928 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Public art-Social aspects-South Africa. | Public art-Political aspects-South Africa. | Public art-South Africa-Public opinion. | Art-Mutilation, defacement, etc.-South Africa. | Public opinion-South Africa. | South Africa-Social conditions-21st century. South Africa-Race relations-21st century.
Classification: LCC N8846.S6 (ebook) | LCC N8846. S6 P83 2017 (print) | DDC 701.03096809051-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023154
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
CONTENTS
Introduction: Engaging with Public Art in South Africa, 1999-2015 / Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann
Acknowledgments
P ART 1: N EGOTIATING D IFFICULT H ISTORIES
1. A Janus-Like Juncture: Reconciling Past and Present at the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park / Elizabeth Rankin
2. A Thinking Stone and Some Pink Presidents: Negotiating Afrikaner Nationalist Monuments at the University of the Free State / Brenda Schmahmann
3. The Mirror and the Square-Old Ideological Conflicts in Motion: Church Square Slavery Memorial / Gavin Younge
P ART 2: D EFINING AND R EDEFINING H EROES
4. Public Art as Political Crucible: Andries Botha s Shaka and Contested Symbols of Zulu Masculinity and Culture in Kwazulu-Natal / Liese van der Watt
5. Mandela s Walk and Biko s Ghosts: Public Art and the Politics of Memory in Port Elizabeth s City Center / Naomi Roux
6. Commemorating Solomon Mahlangu: The Making and Unmaking of a Struggle Icon / Gary Baines
P ART 3: E RASURES AND R UINS
7. The Pain of Memory and the Violence of Erasure: Real and Figural Displays of Female Authority in the Public Sphere / Kim Miller
8. Transgressive Touch: Ruination, Public Feeling, and the Sunday Times Heritage Project / Duane Jethro
P ART 4: E PHEMERAL P ROJECTS
9. Public Art, Troubling Tropes: An Unsettling Intervention in Cape Town / Shannen Hill
10. Unsettling Ambivalences and Ambiguities in Mary Sibande s Long Live the Dead Queen Public Art Project / Leora Farber
11. Unsanctioned: The Inner City Interventions of Julie Lovelace / Karen von Veh
12. Rage against the State: Political Funerals and Queer Visual Activism in Post-Apartheid South Africa / Kylie Thomas
13. Telltale Signs: Unsanctioned Graffiti Interventions in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg / Matthew Ryan Smith
Index
INTRODUCTION
Engaging with Public Art in South Africa, 1999-2015
KIM MILLER AND BRENDA SCHMAHMANN
O N M ARCH 9, 2015, about a dozen protestors gathered in front of a sculpture of mining magnate and politician Cecil John Rhodes on the campus of the University of Cape Town. Among them was a politics student, Chumani Maxwele, who donned a luminous pink protective helmet and adorned himself in sandwich boards with the words EXHIBIT WHITE ARROGANCE U.C.T. on his front and EXHIBIT BLACK ASSIMILATION U.C.T. on his back. Calling for the removal of the statue, the protest culminated in Maxwele tossing a bucket of human excrement at it.
The work in question ( fig. 0.1 ), which sculptor Marion Walgate completed in 1934 and which was given as a gift to the University of Cape Town by the Rhodes National South African Memorial Committee, was intended to commemorate the benefactor of the land on which the university s primary campus had been built. Comprising a full figure about one-and-a-half times life size and set on a pedestal six and a half feet in height, it showed Rhodes seated on a bench and contemplating the vista of Cape Town before him. A verse about Cape Town by Rudyard Kipling had been engraved on the sculpture s plinth:
I DREAM MY DREAM
BY ROCK AND HEATH AND PINE
OF EMPIRE TO THE NORTHWARD
AY, ONE LAND
FROM LION S HEAD TO LINE .

Fig. 0.1 Marion Walgate, Cecil John Rhodes (1934), bronze, 160 122 142 (figure), about 200 cm high pedestal. At the University of Cape Town s upper campus, beneath the steps leading to Jameson Hall, where it was located from 1962 until April 9, 2015. Photograph by Paul Mills .
Walgate s figure was initially placed looking over De Waal Drive toward a rose garden on Rhodes s estate. In 1962, when the widening of De Waal Drive necessitated the sculpture being relocated, it was placed in an even more elevated position just above the rugby field and beneath the stairs leading to the institution s Jameson Hall. It was a move that increased its imperialist associations. While Cape Town is often celebrated for its magnificent natural beauty, the words of Kipling suggested that Rhodes s focus as he contemplated the expansive vista before him was less on the landscape itself than on his ambition to build a railway line linking Cape Town to Cairo-one that would enable him to foster and develop British economic interests in Africa.
Concerns about the continued display of Walgate s representation of Rhodes on a central spot on campus had surfaced from time to time in a post-apartheid dispensation, 1 but these had not had particular impact. The 2015 protest was different, however. Despite the fact that the footage posted on YouTube ended up focusing rather more on the endeavors of University of Cape Town security officials to prevent a journalist from a local newspaper from taking photographs of Maxwele s actions, protest against the retention of the statue escalated in scale and impact, achieving national coverage and placing questions about the role of public art as well as issues to do with the negotiation of a visual art inheritance in the spotlight. On March 11, the university s Student Representative Council issued a formal statement that clarified students perceptions that the retention of the sculpture of Rhodes was symptomatic of the lack of transformative actions being taken by the institution. Arguing that the university continues to celebrate, in its institutional symbolism, figures in South African history, who are undisputedly white supremacists, the statement questioned how a colonizer might donate land that was never his land in the first place. Drawing attention to Rhodes s introduction of the Grey Act which allowed for black people to be utilized as cheap exploited labor in the mines owned by him, the letter suggested that the portrait on campus served as a constant reminder for many black students of the position in society that black people have occupied due to hundreds of years of apartheid, racism, oppression and colonialism. 2 Developing into a campaign titled Rhodes Must Fall, activities included occupation of the university s administrative building by hordes of students-about a hundred of whom committed to sleeping overnight in the building. Faced with an escalating protest, members of the University of Cape Town s senate were almost unanimous in their vote to permanently remove the sculpture of Cecil Rhodes from campus-a decision that was ratified by the university s council on April 8. On April 9, Walgate s sculpture was placed in safekeeping at an offsite venue. 3
The campaign had wider impact. Spreading to Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, where focus was placed on the name of the institution, it extended also to the University of KwaZulu-Natal where a sculpture representing George V on the Howard College campus in Durban was discovered on March 26 to have been defaced with white paint and wrapped in a blanket that was inscribed with the words END WHITE PRIVILEGE. The campaign had additionally in fact spread beyond universities to include art objects in various city centers. Exactly a week prior to the removal of the sculpture, a burning tire was placed on the pinnacle of a monument to the South African War in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, thus reiterating the terrifying and cruel act of necklacing a perceived collaborator (i.e., placing a tire around the neck of a victim and igniting it) that had been a frequent occurrence during the 1