Published 03 October 2022 in Press
BusinessDay
'Is the Afrikaner still a Thing?'
By Chris Thurman
BusinessDay - Art & Entertainment (Page 8)
Published 09 September 2022
Among the various spaces that veteran gallerist and arts mentor Teresa Lizamore has developed or adapted to exhibit the work of SA artists, two Johannesburg sites in particular stand out: the expansive foyer of the Fire Station in Rosebank and Lizamore’s gallery-home in Fairland. While they are independently curated, the exhibitions currently occupying these two spaces make for productive comparison.
At the Fire Station, Sizwe Khoza’s 'At Least For Now...' offers a philosophically and ethically appealing combination. The artist seeks to emphasise “a state of content”: the ability to exercise gratitude for what one has, at the same time as (and perhaps as a result of) recognising the deprivation experienced by those who “have not”.
Khoza’s haunting acrylic portraits depict figures on the margins of society, probably indigent and used to “sleeping rough”. Yet they cradle pillows and blankets that suggest more comfortable circumstances, or, at least, a longing for such comfort.
Set against this reminder of the stark material inequalities that define our country, the question that is posed in the title of the other exhibition may seem rather like navel-gazing. 'Is Ons Nog ’n Ding? (Are We Still a Thing?)' it asks, promising to explore the “use, misuse and transformation of the term Afrikaner in search of redemption, longing and belonging”.
This is not, however, a narcissistic undertaking. Rather, the curatorial team (Lawrence Lemaoana and Johan Stegmann, in partnership with Dineke van der Walt) has brought together a group of artists who probe Afrikaans identities with very material and political considerations in mind. Their approaches range from the earnest to the satirical and the surreal, their styles from cartoons to expressionist realism and abstraction.
Arguably, this variety echoes the truism that being an Afrikaner does not mean “net een ding”, and —despite the best efforts of Nationalist ideologues—it never has. Still, the implicit angst behind the question in the exhibition ’s title relates less to the matter of heterogeneity and more to a latent desire for hegemony. To be a Thing is to be relevant, important, influential, normative.
The exhibition is framed as an intergenerational conversation: Lemaoana and Stegmann initially collaborated with Octavia Roodt, Izak Buys, Nina Torr, Peter Mammes, Barry van der Westhuizen and Heidi Fourie to assemble “a dynamic, generational group with different relationships to the idea of ‘Afrikanerdom’”. They then solicited responses from the “infamous ” Bitterkomix duo, Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes, who represent a previous generation ’s subversive interrogation of what it means to be Afrikaans and, more broadly, a white South African.
It may be that the Bitterkomix shtick is a little overfamiliar, but in this exhibition, Kannemeyer and Botes’ contributions are the least interesting, either visually or intellectually. In the cover image from Bitterkomix 18, Botes alludes to Goya’s famous painting 'Saturn Devouring His Son' and depends on viewers’ awareness of his previous mock-offensive representation of racial difference or Calvinist conservatism to provide some frisson of shock. Likewise, he delights in declaring that Bitterkomix is “a safe space from millennials”, offering a “trigger warning” that there is “freedom of speech inside” and celebrating that Bitterkomix is “wakkerder than woke”.
Yes, well, yawn. Similarly condescending is Kannemeyer’s apparent abandonment of irony in a self-portrait that has the artist lecturing the viewer by quoting George Bernard Shaw about democracy and the shortcomings of the electorate.
Kannemeyer is in better form with his wicked treatment of Hansie Cronje’s pious hypocrisy. Nonetheless, the work of the self-described “young Afrikaners” in this exhibition is wittier, sharper and more thought-provoking.
Roodt ’s delightful 'Agtergeblewene' imagines an NG Kerk building that turns into an escape rocket for its congregation, pondering the fate of those left behind.
Stegmann envisages the launch of another architectural icon —this time it’s the Voortrekker Monument that blasts skyward —as he brings our attention to www.skhokho.net, an organisation not for “bittereinders ” but for “betereinders ”, enjoining Afrikaners to feel included in a broad but unified SA identity.
Stegmann invokes the figure of Nelson Mandela, but his work is too mordant for any Madiba as-saviour rainbowism.
Buys ’ remarkable pyrography, Mammes’ “dark spectacles ” and Fourie andTorr ’s intertwining of the human and the floral all lend this exhibition a troubling atmosphere to counterbalance the sardonic and playful humour.
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Image Credit: Octavia Roodt l 'Selfportret as Bittereinder' l 2019 l Giclée print on 230 GSM paper l 49,5 x 45 cm