Creative Cape Town

When it comes to art in public places – and questions of what it is, who it’s by and what it is meant to do – there have been a few memorable incidents in Cape Town this year.

Incident #1: But is it art?

The first of these involved a zebra and a mistaken identity: One of 33 zebras decorated by local artists and displayed around the Artscape precinct was realistically painted (in black and white stripes) but included red graffiti-style tagging. The artwork was subsequently “cleaned up” by city officials thinking they were removing evidence of vandalism. The artist, in an interview with Myweku, tells of how the work itself was a commentary on the city’s graffiti bylaw (which draws distinctions between murals and tagging): “My work is a commentary on the… passing of the graffiti bylaw in Cape Town as I believe too that the bylaw itself is not black and white. The fact is that the city wants to completely outlaw the art of graffiti. I deliberately tagged my own artwork in this public exhibition to prove a point, to provoke them, as I knew they would remove it and they took the bait.”

Incident #2: Who is an artist?

Shortly thereafter, Sea Point became a hotbed of activity, starting with the creation and desecration of a secret garden: Henry Young and Ernest Jacobs, who have lived on the city streets for a number of decades, grew a “garden of peace” on the Sea Point promenade – cutting down bushes, planting flowers, laying down compost – only to have it dismantled by officials. “We made this garden for the community. It is a garden of peace,” said Henry in an interview with the People’s Post. “It used to be a toilet for people from the taxi rank, but we decided to make it beautiful and nice for everyone. It used to stink a lot and nobody wanted to walk past here. Now we are just very sad. Very, very sad.”

Incident #3: Who commissioned and paid for it?

Still in Sea Point, a series of statues were hacked and then hijacked: Marieke Prinsloo-Rowe’s Walking the Road – the journey of a young girl and a dragonfly meant to stand is a metaphor for our move to democracy – caused quite a stir, both online and on the street. It started with stern criticism from a Goldsmiths’ PhD candidate Linda Stupart (published on Mahala) – in which she commented on the City’s public arts’ stance (which seemingly only allows the affluent to exhibit in public spaces, at their own expense, as was the case with Walking the Road) and the artistic value of the installation itself. Shortly thereafter, the statue’s limbs were repeatedly hacked off, and one particular statue was “forcibly relocated” to the UCT men’s residence. Linda, in a response to the vandalism, said: “I am sorry that Ms Prinsloo-Rowe’s work has been so mindlessly destroyed, an action that is violent and unacceptable. It was never my intention to incite people to vandalise the work. Rather I felt it was important to point out that the work is there because of Prinsloo-Rowe’s economic advantage rather than its artistic merit. There are, however, issues [that need to be addressed] of both transparency and transformation with regard to the Sea Point Council’s decision to erect the sculptures, as well as the decision for the work to remain.” (Read the original critique, and the follow-up on Mahala for all the details).

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Image: courtesy of Hanrie Bosch at the People’s Post.