Pippa Skotnes
Crossfire
I first saw the San diorama at the South African Museum as a child. It was, for those who have not seen it, a collection of skilfully cast and painted plaster figures enacting a domestic scene set in a 19th?century hunter-gatherer camp.
It was framed by a finely painted stretch?of mountains lit by the light of a winter’s sun on a Karoo morning.
I remembered it as a compelling, dramatic scene a fantastic glimpse into a silent past, forever preserved in a small dark hall?in Cape Town.
Many years later I hiked in the Drakensberg and slept in?the caves that were the last retreat of the San in the eastern part?of the country. These shelters were painted with their own images of their destruction British soldiers on horseback firing rifles,?and here and there the cloaked or white-bodied figures of shamans harnessing the magical power that was, in the end, powerless to avert?their own annihilation.
These images framed not only my own encounter with representations of?and by the San, but they represent the extremes in the corpus of San?representations. At the one end, the 19th and early 20th century?interests of scientific inquiry and public curiosity (twinned with the?prejudice of colonialism) were served by alienating the?San from history and so from humanity. At the other, far?less visible end, the San left their own contrasting trace of how they?saw themselves at the same time as garnering their symbolic power to?participate, through resistance, in the progress of their own (and?South Africa’s) history.
This week the controversial closure of the diorama after pressure from the public, scholars,Cabinet?ministers and former president Nelson Mandela represents an attempt to unmake the image of the San as it has been made by others.
The closure?of this display, it is argued, will represent an act of transformation?in museums. More specifically it will be a contribution to the remaking?of the dignity and humanity of the San. It represents a removal of?human beings from the context of exhibits that are largely to do with?the non-human environment.
This restoration is important, particularly?to the government, where the heritage of the San has been seen as a?unifying feature of our new democracy. The /Xam text and figures drawn from the Linton rock painting at the same museum on the?new South African crest, speak of San imagery as belonging to?everyone, as being above party politics, outside of ethnic divisions,?common to all.
Yet is this act of unmaking simultaneously an act of restoration? I think not. The diorama is a central display in?a museum that is as much about human?culture as any museum of cultural history. Like the?tableaux of book art and printing, objects from a diversity of global?cultures and the self-reflexive exhibits of museum practice, the?displays of skeletons and stuffed animals speak less of natural?history than of historically contingent human values and endeavours.
That this relationship is not made overt is one of the failings of the museum that makes the San diorama less acceptable, even offensive. Yet?given this, and partly because of this, the diorama remains a?powerful, theatrical exhibit persuasive in its narrative of a people with no history, no time, no politics.
It is a significant part of a grander?narrative of the San, one familiar not only in museums, but in?advertising, sports logos, popular imagery and literature. It is a?narrative that has not only enabled genocide and dehumanisation, but?also a narrative that has enabled the depoliticisation of the San,?the disqualification of descendants as the rightful inheritors of San?culture and San creative traditions and the use of San figures,?ironically in a national crest.
The challenge is not to get rid of the diorama,?but to alter it, to use the visual power of the diorama to?interrupt the narrative it represents, to find ways to displace and?replace the stereotype it perpetuates.
The challenge is to understand?the importance of history, of narrative, of the power of?representation, of the appeal in the voyeurism of the museum?gaze. This is as true for the diorama as for the whale exhibits or the?halls of stuffed mammals.
The diorama, and the museum context as a whole, could, and should, be used?to represent individuals and ideas behind?displays in the case of the San exhibit?to create a space that reinvests the drama with?history, with events in the San war against colonialism?and celebrates individual stories of misery and heroism that were being played out at?the time the diorama was set.
A recasting of the diorama, and indeed?of similar exhibits around the country, could reanimate the disembodied rock art displays that often lie alongside?them, and make them more widely accessible.
A failure to do this makes the closing of the diorama yet another act?of dispossession, of casting the San out of contemporary political?and historical debate and a missed opportunity to transform our?museums.
Pippa Skotnes is professor of fine art and director of the Museum Workshop at the University of Cape Town