Liese van der Watt On show in Johannesburg
No one ever speaks of “alternative” English or “dissident” Xhosas. And yet, descriptive phrases about alternative musicians, rebel poets and dissident academics are still used wherever Afrikaners, and what is assumed to be their homogeneous culture, is a topic of review.
The reasons for this are of course located in that historical process, whereby the discourse of Afrikaner nationalism solidified into a rigid master narrative, intolerant of conflicting voices and identities. Soon that master narrative came to denote an essence, a fixed identity which centred around a white and male hegemony.
It is typical of the short-sighted arrogance of that discourse that politicians like Connie Mulder believe themselves to be negotiating on behalf of Afrikaners – an arrogance that has moved many to describe themselves rather as Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, and gave birth to the term Afrikaanses, which is supposedly indicative of greater inclusivity and a denial of a fixed identity.
Antoinette Murdoch’s current installation at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg, entitled Gereformeerd II (Reformed II), is another instance of that increasingly visible process whereby essentialist notions of identity are being eroded, challenged and fragmented. This Murdoch achieves by working from within the familiarity of her Afrikaans background while quietly registering her dissidence from the many rituals and roles that that lineage has bestowed upon her.
In a cynical take on the Calvinist tradition of infant christening that stands central to the reformed religion which many Afrikaners follow, Murdoch has constructed a delicate christening gown out of white toilet paper.
The sacredness of that ritual, underscored by the symbolic use of white, is undermined by the bathos of the medium that she chooses to work in, pointing to the ways in which this religious ceremony has become an empty ritual of name-giving rather than one of piety.
This infant gown is juxtaposed with photographs set in funeral wreaths of a young woman being baptised, invoking associations with what is according to Murdoch the original significance of baptism – a ritual to symbolise the death of sin and a new life in Christ.
Still engaging with her Christian and Calvinist upbringing, Murdoch moulds praying hands in toilet paper and places these in a protective circle – resembling a wagon wheel – around two reconstructed photographs of Voortrekker women, busy with domestic chores.
Once again it is the incongruity of the medium in that context that forces one to realise the potential emptiness of religious belief, especially when it becomes a mere habit, passed on as an unchanging tradition. The mixture of evocative imagery in this piece subtly points to the complicity of religion with patriarchy that has resulted in designated roles for women within that framework.
This engagement with the role and place of women is further developed in a quilt which Murdoch has sewn painstakingly using pink toilet paper and facial tissues. An object that is usually passed on from generation to generation as a precious heirloom, this paper quilt defies ideas of lineage and inheritance that is problematised throughout this show.
Murdoch’s critical understanding of her place in a lineage of Afrikaner women is used potently to question familial values and relations, giving texture to her identity as a woman of Afrikaner stock.
Antoinette Murdoch’s installation Gereformeerd II can be viewed at the The Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, until July 25