Creative Cape Town

Home And Away is bringing local and international apartheid era and related art together (and out of hiding).

Art is subjective, which is why it’s sometimes not taken seriously. It’s also incisive, often derisive, and can, at times, be more insightful and honest about current events than much of the world’s media. Or past ones. And, boy, do art and South Africa have a past. Which is why it should be taken seriously.

Art from the past is not as exclusively pale and pretty as museums of the Apartheid era may have suggested. They focused largely on condoned art, art that was not sourced from or inspired by the marginalised masses in its citizenry. But South African art entire also involved protest posters, makeshift materials, elegant and garish statements of self and soul and whole that didn’t look good in a post colonial parlour, especially if you were the type to squint quizzically at the signature and ask  “Fikile Magadlela’? That’s not a bla-that’s Japanese, surely?”  If it was shown at all, it was under the euphemism ‘ethnographic’ and, in accordance, shown only in ethnographic museums. End of story.

Or the beginning. For, despite national denial, much indigenous art of calibre was made during this time by people the government forced pass laws on, and it was even bought, often by dynamic foreign diplomats stationed here on important work. It was also taken away by them when their important work ended – a brain drain of a very different kind; more a heart transplant, really, and horribly ahead of Dr. Barnard’s time.

Today, it is the work of Ifa Lethu Foundation to ensure the repatriation of art and heritage objects ‘lost’ during The Struggle and making it available to all South Africans. In the spirit of asking nicely, they have, since 2005, had donations from around the world of local art work produced during Apartheid. The total collection now numbers more than 300 pieces, proving that the rest of the world still cares.

We know it cared during Apartheid; it showed its love (of freedom) and support (of our fight for it) through trade sanctions and silent assistance with the liberation struggle, much to the chagrin of RSA citizens in support of the modus operandi. Art was not neglected in these efforts. Established artists advertised their animosity towards a system of institutionalized inequality in a roving exhibition called ACA (Art Contre Apartheid, or Art Against Apartheid) in 1983. It consisted of 80 contributions from top international artists from the ‘70s and ‘80s led by Ernest Pignon-Ernest including American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, Czech poet and painter Jiří Kolář and Senegalese artist and educator Iba N’Diaye. The exhibition, conceptualised as a protest and an incentive of sorts – a “gift to the people of South African on the achievement of the first free and democratic government by universal suffrage’” (Premesh Lalu, Centre for Humanities Research, UWC) was seen in 40 cities across the earth. All good, but what about South Africans seeing it? As Lalu rightly points out, the exhibition was born in exile, and bore witness against the forced assignment to ‘natural’ territory. Naturally we’d want to see it. That’s where curator Carol Brown steps in and we fast forward to Cape Town, 2010.

‘Home And Away’ is a vibrant and thoughtful exhibition of art created during the Apartheid years 1948 – 1990 hosted by Iziko Museums.  It incorporates work from the Ifa Lethu Foundation collection and the ACA exhibition. In an echo of the some of the works’ original itinerant routes, and as an expression of the constant shifts in art and socio-political systems, it is, itself, a roving exhibition.  It has been in Johannesburg, and will travel to Durban after its summer holiday here in the Mother City.

To draw the apparently disparate poles of ‘home’ and ‘away’ together, Carol chose to group works according to universal themes. They covered the gamut of human experience –  Suffering and Conflict; Visions Of The Self/Hero; The Body; Work, Leisure and Culture; Another Reality/Abstraction;Whose Land Is It? ; The Power Of Words. Seeing the works in this new assembly, irrespective of their origin, seamlessly amalgamates related thoughts on what is forced and what is found, what is given and what is freed, what is here and what is there, what is mine and what is yours into a single statement of inherent connectedness.

Ifa Lethu Patron, Dr Mamphlea Ramphele sums up the importance of recognizing the contribution of individual, creative expression to the collective wellbeing in a statement originally referencing Ifa Lethu’s success so far.  “While the first decade of our democracy correctly focused on redressing imbalances in the material welfare of its citizens, it has become clear that the neglect of the reconstruction and development of the soul has resulted in fractures of our society as evidenced by levels of crime, anger and violence.” Art, in its own way, goes a long way to expressing and overcoming this, and ‘Home And Away’ sheds light on the subject in its own, subjective way.

South African artists on display : Melissa Becker, Victor Gordon, Dumile Feni, Michael Nkolo Maapolo, Fikile Magadlela, Dikobe Wa Mogale (Benedict) Martins, Eric Mbatha, David Mbele, Thamsanqwa (Thami)Mnyele, Hugh Linda Nolutshungu, Nathaniel (Nat) Ntwayakgosi Mokgosi, Motshile Wa Nthodi, Miles Pelo, Mothabeng David Phoshoko, Winston Churchill Masakeng Saoli, Lucky Madlo Sibiya, Vuminkosi Zulu.

The exhibition runs till 30^th January 2011
@ Iziko Michaelis Collection
The Old Townhouse
On Greenmarket Square