Published 03 October 2022 in Press
Artthrob
'Violence and longing: Is Ons Nog ‘n Ding? at Lizamore & Associates'
By Fadzai Muchemwa
Artthrob - Review
Published 28 September 2022
'Is Ons Nog ‘n Ding?' offers a divergent group of artists who interrogate Afrikaner identity and long for belonging. This exhibition’s proposition is exciting in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which reignited conversations around notions of empire, colonisation, violence and belonging.
Beyond the stereotypical symbols of Afrikaner identity – conservative Calvinism and Afrikaans language and culture – what does it mean to be a white Afrikaner? The exploration of Afrikaner identity in terms of potential redemption and transformation raises questions of purity and authenticity and is a significant attempt to sidestep an ethnographic approach. Longing – for the past, for belonging – cruelly kidnaps our capacity for presence more than anything. Yet yearning is also a potent creative force. All art is born out of a yearning for meaning—all science from a longing for truth. Out of longing for redemption and healing, 'Is Ons ‘n Ding?'
Johan Stegmann, 'Barend ‘Bomkop” Strydom & Leon “K-Boetie” Wessels (Two of a kind)', 2021. Courtesy of Lizamore & Associates.
The work is beautifully executed and makes a compelling proposition exploring race, gender, violence and the entanglement of guilt and complicity through allegory and biting satire. Guilt and complicity have a complicated relationship with violence, and symbols we associate with violence, religion, and the media are at the core of the work in this group exhibition. Hannah Arendt observed that human beings are “unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable.” The exhibition’s title is tinged with existential dread, doubt, hope, cynicism, humour, longing and surprise. We call this feeling many different names — the Portuguese call it 'saudade': the indescribable, untranslatable, vague, constant yearning for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality.
Whilst Afrikaner identity is not homogenous. Johan Stegmann makes an interesting comparison of Barend Strydom and Leon Wessels, calling them “two of a kind,” 'Barend ‘Bomkop’ Strydom and Leon ‘K-Boetie’ Wessel (Two of a Kind)'. Stegmann presents the murderer Barend Strydom of the Strijdom Square massacre in Pretoria and the self-flagellating liberal as equally guilty when it comes to monuments of brutality that came with group areas, influx control and security measures that now rear their heads as xenophobic attacks and high rates of poverty.
Heidi Fourie, 'Ek as ‘n Inheemse boom in die skoolkonsert (met hulde aan Dalene Matthee en Karoliena Kapp)', 2022
Nina Torr, 'Dis ‘n tydelike ding', 2022.
The icons of love (Octavia Roodt’s 'Kerkplein'), redemption (Izak Buys’ 'Verlossing') and healing (Peter Mammes, 'Curative') where beauty is located will betray us if we trust them; they have, after all, been weaponised in spreading dominance. These things — the beauty and the memory of our past — are images of what we desire. The power of allegory and its ability to seduce the viewer into a narrative of possibilities makes one forget that 'Is Ons ‘n Ding?' is a presentation of dilemmas of the liberal who is tainted by the privilege of their position.
The artists satirise icons: the church (and its different manifestations), identity (Conrad Botes, 'Untitled (Dilemmas of Liberal Antinomies)'), democracy (Anton Kannemeyer, 'Self Portrait: Democracy'). Orania, the bastion of Afrikaner identity, is not spared (Johan Stegmann, 'Al die mooi vroue bly in Orania'). Is satire enough, though? Everyone seems to be on the fence, satirising the violence on the one hand and exploring the ‘beauty’ and diversity of Afrikaner identity (that does not consider the ‘others’ who are part of shaping this identity) on the other, but offering no concrete solutions. Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes, through 'Bitterkomix', have been at it since 1992, but what may have been radical to audiences thirty years ago feels hackneyed today.
Anton Kannemeyer, 'Bitterkomix 18 Back Cover', 2020. Courtesy of Lizamore & Associates.
Heidi Fourie’s nostalgic explorations and Octavia Roodt’s fictional narratives make me consider the illusory nature of these shorthands for longing: prayer, monuments that extolled the glory of empire and domination, symbols of violence. Heidi Fourie talks of loyalty to the community, but wonders what lies beyond the known world and empathises with those not recognised. She interestingly makes tentative steps towards exploring more than human worlds whilst questioning progress made at the expense of indigenous knowledge. Octavia Roodt’s 'Safety Instruction for the Burning of the Icon' might be one possibility of leaving the fence. There is, after all, the clarifying nature of fire as a medium. Izak Buys, through pyrography, shows the exploration of memory in sharp relief: its transience and how it can be lost or buried.
Octavia Roodt, 'Agtergeblewene (detail)', 2022. Courtesy of Lizamore & Associates.
The curatorial direction of this project was guided by Lawrence Lemaoane. His embroidered flags, 'Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison)', represent the exclusion and separatist patterns that are a consequence of 300 years of conquest and need to be reversed. The curatorial text does point out that he represents an outsider’s perspective. Lemaoane represents the excluded, but that is problematic, because the excluded have many faces and languages. The violent past of the dominance of language and the politics of language remains a massive problem in South Africa, with English and Afrikaans the dominant languages. How, then, do you achieve the genuinely inclusive transformation of everyone, considering that dispossession took away more than land, robbing people of developing skillsets necessary for today’s world?
How we invent ourselves informs how we reinvent our place in the world. But harrowing as this intimacy and its ruptures may be, its mirror-image intimates something wonderfully assuring. Just like painful relationships can so upend us, healthy relationships can regulate us and recalibrate habits forged in our earliest attachments. The exhibition, whilst making a compelling proposition in the face of what has been happening in South Africa in the past year, falls short of reaching beyond our beliefs about what we deserve.
To view the original Review please navigate to the Artthrob website here
Image Credit: Anton Kannemeyer, 'Self portrait: Democracy', 2018. Courtesy of Lizamore & Associates.