FINE ART: Hazel Friedman
ARTISTS Clifford Charles and Samson Mnisi could hardly be blamed for wanting to throw a brick through the window of their exhibition site. That’s how frustrated they must feel about the general response to their show.
Their exhibition, B(l)ack in Town, is currently on display on the recently vacated 13th floor of the Ampros Building in Diagonal Street (formerly the Times Media Limited headquarters).The building itself stands virtually empty – a hollow shrine to monopoly capitalism in an area now dominated by small-time traders. With its aerial view of the miniature dialogues taking place on the streets below, it seems an ideal place for an exhibition.
“The lack of response has been a humbling experience,” says Mnisi, gesturing to the former corporate office space. It is now filled from floor to ceiling with drawings on Chinese prayer paper purchased from Chinatown, sheets, paper strips, mobiles and the debris left behind by Times Media staff.
The reason for this sanguine response also constitutes the motive for the exhibition. Despite the overtly Africanist inference of its title, B(l)ack in Town is not about racial consciousness in the conventional sense of the term. It is more meditative than militant.
It derives from an incident when Mnisi was shot in the back and fellow “urban warrior” Charles was forced to take care of him on an isolated farm. Neither had transport, money or any means of contact with the city. Their enforced period of “solitary confinement” cemented an unbreakable bond.
That external incident was translated into a shared inner experience and a personal understanding of violence and pain. Armed with only one book, blankets, sheets, guinea fowl feathers and the most primitive of creative tools, they spent their time immersed in the ritual of mark-making.
“Because we had no recourse to anything we were fored to re-explore the creative act, and to find a sense of equilibrium in the most basic of rituals,” says Charles. “As our memory of the city became more detached, we realised how the urge simply to create remains the imperative for artists, and that people use basic rituals as a means of liberation.” He adds: “When Sam was better, we returned to the city as outsiders.”
Their choice of the diamond building was based on its history and the way in which it had imposed itself on the existing communities in Diagonal Street.
“The inhabitants of the social architecture had moved out of the building because the old social system had become inadequate to deal with the new social forces,” reflects Charles. “The homeless have now reclaimed the empty buildings,” points out Mnisi. “And there’s a whole social dialogue going on below that we can’t tap into. All we can do is look out. Yet they can’t see in.”
B(l)ack in Town is on view through July