This year’s visual arts programme for the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees is the best yet, but the debut solo show by sculptor Wim Botha may steal the show, writes Kathryn Smith
Pillars of salt, fugitive veils and mysterious long-lost drinking vessels are traditionally the stuff that great biblical myths are made of.
So when encountering a virtuoso handling of a small sculpture of the Madonna made from mieliepap with a blinking, red halo of hypodermic needles on exhibition in Pretoria a few years ago, I wondered: is this perhaps what they all meant by the “African renaissance”? Can Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks at last be eclipsed by our own Madonna of the Mielies?
Truth to materials is a famed art critical maxim. This mieliepap Maria, preserved with salt so that it dried to a texture and hue reminiscent of marble statues, is now falling apart, the victim of moisture, moths and organic processes of decay.
Once highly prized as currency and thus a luxury item, salt’s current status has shifted to a taken-for-granted and, some would argue, fundamental condiment. So then what is to be said for the substitution of highly prized bronze or marble for ubiquitous and inexpensive mieliepap, and for a representation of a religious figure at that, or for a representation of the crucified Christ, carved from R12?000 worth of bound and unbound Bibles in the 11 official languages?
Commune: Suspension of Disbelief is Pretoria-based sculptor Wim Botha’s debut solo show, hosted by this year’s Klein Karoo Nationale Kunstefees (KKNK). The first in a series of three solo shows, all operating under the umbrella title of Commune, it features this lifesize paper-carved Christ figure suspended in a room beneath a skylight, surrounded by six CCTV cameras connected to two monitors. The mandatory depiction of bleeding wounds on thorax and forehead are fashioned from the red-stained edges of the bible pages.
Divine intervention or happy accident, the festival coincides with the Easter weekend.
Best known for carving typical South African wildlife from blocks of government and other official documents drilled through and bolted together, Botha has a knack of disguising quite radical content under the veil of traditional form.
Those Taliban-inspired readers ready to yell “iconoclast”, hold your fire. Where Botha is concerned, we’re talking serious art-with-a-brain, having made a name for himself transforming rather humble materials into monumental sculptures monumental in scope and conceptual weight, that is.
The installation is fundamentally an investigation into our relationship to familiar icons and objects that speak about belief, faith, observation, transgression and forgiveness.
Inspired by a recent research trip to the Vatican where he came face to face with the Laocoon Group and Michelangelo’s Pieta, as well as the small ivory crucifix that inspired this show, the Commune series is about shifting and localising these foreign objects through materials, and by association, the abstract concepts contained therein.
Both the Pieta and the Laocoon occupy seemingly untouchable places in the canons of Western art history, both for their status as masterworks as well as their depiction of historical-mythological events on which the Western world bases fundamental belief systems and civil ideals.
Given the labour-intensiveness of his working methods, his desire to recreate a lifesize, mieliepap Pieta for the second show in the series scheduled for the Pretoria Art Museum in January, and a lifesize, paper-carved Laocoon Group for a third show, it’s a short leap from the sublime to the “good heavens!”.
Speaking of suspension, Botha comments: “The work accesses our current situation, in which value systems, accountability and forgiveness are under scrutiny and subject to reassessment. As a result of the indigenous nature of its substance, the universality of the crucifix as an iconographical symbol is challenged, or by implication affirmed, by directly appropriating it into the South African context.”
Religious dogma and political ideology are close bedfellows biblical texts and legal constitutions both attempt particular versions of societal order in their transformation of abstract belief into written text.
Paper, inexpensive as it is, gains value and power as a carrier of information, not unlike Joseph Beuys’s famed Batteries a series of stacked newspapers. Likewise, Botha’s use of a dietary staple to represent a religious icon in the mieliepap Maria acts as a metaphor for the spiritual sustenance that faith offers.
The inclusion of CCTV cameras reads as a contentious take on the god-complex of Big Brother: “The viewer cannot approach the object to perform scrutiny without involving him/herself in a direct manner and becoming the object of the gaze. The security aspect relates to misdeed and suggests implication on the part of the person captured. This holds not only for this country but also apparently for religion.”
There’s no doubt this exhibition will be a reflective moment in this year’s visual arts festival programme, once again directed by Clive van den Berg. Recognising a festival’s responsibility as a showcase for the fresh and experimental, he has combined a series of commissioned curated exhibitions, solo shows and special events that both adhere to and challenge the rules of the white cube and engage public spaces.
The fuller coffers, provided again by Sasol, have also facilitated the production of a luscious, dense catalogue that gives a faithful and intelligent impression of each exhibition on the main programme. Featuring a public piece by Luan Nel, switch on/off (new media and digital art curated by Marcus Neustetter), rest & motion (dealing with historical and contemporary perceptions of bodies and spaces) and the ever-popular Boogie Lights by Conrad Botes and Brett Murray, it will not be long before the KKNK becomes something of a benchmark event on the contemporary arts calendar.
Commune: Suspension of Disbelief will show at the Principia School on Baron van Rheede Street, Oudtshoorn, from April 7. For information about the KKNK call Tel: (044) 272?7771 or visit www.karoofees.com