An installation at the Johannesburg Art Gallery reveals surprising new dimensions to traditional African art and craft, reports RUTH SACK
THE status of traditional African crafts and artefacts in Western museums has long been a question of unending debate. Over the years it has been possible to observe, in our museums and galleries, how versions of the debate have unfolded: from arbitrary collections of ethnographic specimens to `lifelike re-creations’ complete with authentic huts and dressed-up manikins; from careful attempts to contextualise by means of wall-text and photograph to the unencumbered presentation of artefact as pure aesthetic form. But, no matter what the approach, finally, always, the objects on display would seem accompanied by a sense of dislocation and loss — a sense that the process that had brought these things to this point was one that underscored alienation and otherness; one that silenced the objects and their makers. The truth is that in almost any attempt to deal with cultural artefacts in a Western-style museum, displacement and dislocation are, almost by definition, a given. However, at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, curator of African art Nessa Leibhammer has been completing the installation of a permanent exhibit of mostly Southern African art that addresses this `given’ in remarkable ways. It was, incredibly, only about two years ago that the post of curator of African art was created at the gallery, alongside the curatorships of prints, drawings, contemporary works, and the mainly Dutch, French and English Foundation Collection. Since then, far-reaching changes have irrevocably altered the nature of the gallery. One’s journey through the building now begins and ends in Africa. Earlier South African painters are no longer placed only as descendants of an early 20th-century European heritage: the geography of the gallery now situates them at least as firmly as a part of a South African tradition. Leibhammer has very consciously arranged what are now the Southern African spaces. The first is a `public’ space (of outer garments resplendent with beadwork and embroidery, and sticks of ceremonial flourish), leading into a quiet `inner’ world (of headrests for sleep, dolls for fertility, for initiation, for health — the passages of maturity). And then to two recently installed spaces — bigger and more complex in their arrangement. And much more surprising, for what Leibhammer has done has been to juxtapose the traditional artefacts with contemporary `fine’ art works. No visible distinction has been made as to their respective status. Beerpot-lids and beaded aprons hang beside and in between drawings, prints and paintings. Knives, bowls and pipes share space at close quarters with sculptures, a collage, oil paintings. The images are all by black South African artists. Leibhammer’s long-term project is that `black voices’ should document, interpret and recall the histories of the production and use of the artefacts. Most of the works either depict in some way the lifestyle that incorporated these objects, or express their ethos or
But the relationships that are set up are only occasionally obvious; open-ended, various and allusive, they work on many levels. And contrary, perhaps, to what one may have expected, meaning is conferred both ways: from images to objects and back again. Formal affinities are dangerous to make because they may blur rather than clarify. But fascinating dialogues occur: even a painting in a modernist idiom, such as Ernest Mancoba’s The Ancestor, is surprisingly affected by surrounding pieces. Cross-currents within craft traditions have always existed. Here we make the liberating discovery, for instance, that the words `500 Deposit The Lion’ could be judged for their pure design potential, and worked in beads. The Ace Mealiemeal logo is brilliantly improved on, in embroidery thread, as meal-bags become recycled as clothing. Does the motif take on new meaning? Why is it so faithfully adhered to? The exhibition extends this process: we are presented with a work by sculptor Johannes Maswanganye, a carved figure of a young woman wearing an `Iwisa’-embroidered cloth, painted on to the wood. Is it a symbol for the artist, or is he simply documenting an object typically worn? One artist, Bongi Dhlomo, has spoken to Leibhammer of her work. Called At the End of the Day, it is a painting of a headrest, very similar to one positioned nearby. The painting monumentalises it, like an altar or a gate. By contrast, the real one is small and personal. But Dhlomo relates how, more than a support for the head, the headrest provided a link to the ancestors as one slept, and traditionally it would be buried in one’s grave for the last long sleep. The exhibition also brings new pressure to bear on the straining boundary between art and craft. In the smaller, more formal room, for instance, the presentation invites us to contemplate each piece individually, as a masterpiece. Surely the notion of masterpieces arises only as craftworks are displayed in museums? At least one of the vessels here is in fact a `museum piece’, having been specially commissioned — the basket by Sabina Mtetwa from KwaZulu. In the larger room, the objects are stood upright: spoons, sticks, knives, axes. Their verticality emphasises their figurative aspect; they are made sculptural. And in the process, it becomes obvious that the art/craft distinction is not merely a theoretical issue for academics or curators. The very works themselves pose the question. A Mozambican spoon, for example, has an almost free-standing figure of a man attached to its shaft, that must surely impair its efficiency as a spoon. In museums, by focusing on the visual aspect, a world of other factors must be excluded. In some objects, silence and motionlessness are a self-contradiction: the drum, for example, and the mask, express only sad, silent remoteness. Even the varieties of stick hint at how differently they might appear in expert hands. Because these are no mere `sticks’. There are ritual sticks, fighting sticks, walking sticks, sleeping sticks and even — judging by the carvings — sticks of pure satire. We can only imagine their part in entire arrangements of gesture, speech, dress and movement. So who will speak for these objects? This aspect of Leibhammer’s work has begun to take shape. Avoiding the cacophony of voices that usually accompany such exhibitions — those of art historians, anthropologists, critics, collectors — she is in the process of recording the words of those who can remember at first or second hand: makers, users, owners, participants. Wilson Baloyi, son and grandson of woodcarvers, is one such informant. He has explained the riddle of the `sleeping sticks’: travellers (on foot) would carry these headrests-with-sticks, and before going to sleep at night, the stick would be pointed in the direction of the journey — to avoid the possibility of waking in the morning disoriented, and heading off in the wrong direction. The result of this process may lead toward a new kind of art historianship. What do young urban black people feel about these objects? For some it represents a past for which they feel no nostalgia. Others speak of anxiety about `private things’ on public display. And still others request to be photographed with the objects — a repeated occurrence since the installation was completed. James Clifford quotes the poet J Fenton, who speaks of a museum in which each visitor might `find the landscape of their childhood marked out …’ This seems to be that kind of exhibition — for anyone. The richness, pleasure, generosity, humour and time that the artists lavished on their work is here for the revelling in.