Threats from Afrikaner cultural organisations almost put an end to a controversial art exhibition. Charl Blignaut reports
A proposed Pretoria art exhibition has sparked a battle that reads like a chapter from an account of a modern-day Boer War.
The future of a controversial exhibition by Johannesburg-based artist Kendell Geers is hanging in the balance after a near- diplomatic crisis induced by a string of protests and threats from organisations involved in the centenary celebrations of Fort Klapperkop outside Pretoria.
The fort is to be the site of Geers’s latest public art project, called Guilty. Geers — in similar style to rightwinger Willem Ratte who, in a show of political defiance, took possession of Klapperkop’s adjoining fort, Schanskop, in 1993 — was to have locked himself in the fort “in the name of art” on Sunday, 100 years to the day that it was opened by president Paul Kruger.
It is also the day that marks the closure of the Johannesburg Biennale, which is significant to Geers as an art project which never received due public support.
The fort, at various times in possession of both the Boers and the British, is, according to Geers, the ideal space in which to test notions of guilt and the siege mentality.
But this week the French Institute of South Africa and the Pretoria City Council withdrew all support for Geers’s show. The artist has, however, vowed to proceed with his plans regardless.
The city council was not available for comment, but it is understood that it withdrew its permission for Geers to use the fort on Wednesday after political pressure was brought to bear by both members of the public and organisations involved in the fort’s centenary celebrations.
Several of the organisations — including cultural dancers, Radio Pretoria and the Afrikaner Volkswag — were outraged after Geers, himself an Afrikaner, announced that their activities were part of his artwork.
Major Doep Martin, organiser of the festivities that will include cannon salutes, boere sports and dances, panel discussions, lectures and the hoisting of both the Vierkleur flag and the Union Jack, said: “We are in no way part of his art. He is playing with my integrity if he thinks I’m going to be his ball to kick around. It’s enough to make me furious … But I must stress that this is not a political thing — it is about cultural history.”
“Now they’re trying to unart themselves,” responded Geers. “You know you’re making confrontational art when the artworks rise up against the artist.”
Several letters of protest were sent to Gauteng newspapers, and Fiona Glencross, curator of the Goodman Gallery, in whose stable Geers works, received a phone call threatening repercussions should the gallery go ahead with plans to hang a banner reading “guilty” on its premises.
Gallery owner Linda Givon said the banner “is not challenging anybody’s agenda. It’s just challenging everybody’s guilt. If Kendell were not an Afrikaner, I would have doubts about lending my name to the show, but he is talking about his own history as an Afrikaner. His work is always contentious, challenging the state of South African culture and the state of the art world … I feel very strongly that freedom of expression is at stake.”
Said Geers: “The right wing is taking this very personally, when actually it’s much bigger than them. They’re not the only people in the country who are guilty. If you’re going to overreact to the word `guilty’, which I have hung up all over town, then you’re obviously guilty or you’re hiding something.”
Geers had planned his invasion of the fort for some time along with regular art patrons, the French Institute, the financial backers for the show. But when the French embassy became the brunt of angry and threatening letters, it also decided to withdraw — without consulting the artist — citing in a press release that it could not be part of any activity that harms South African political sentiments.
Geers, however, stresses that it was the French who invited him to exhibit at Klapperkop in the first place, after the building reverted to the Pretoria museum in 1996 and became available for cultural use.
But by Wednesday the French embassy was in turmoil, with the cultural attach trying to soothe frayed nerves.
The situation was exacerbated when the German ambassador to South Africa challenged the French ambassador to take action when he saw the invitation to the exhibition. The image on the invitation is of German police guards, photographed during President Nelson Mandela’s state visit to Berlin.
Geers is also planning to lower the Vierkleur and Union Jack and raise his own flags at Klapperkop, one white and one black, a suggestion particularly reviled by Martin, who stressed that protocol had to be followed when raising flags. Geers, he said, had no such qualifications.