ART
Antoinette du Plessis
Most frequently, academic literature on the subject of tourist art is concerned with aspects of the production of artefacts for sale to tourists. Less easy to research with any kind of pretence of academic rigour is the other end of the equation the tourist/traveller as patron, as consumer, as communicator. How does one quantify spur-of-the-moment buying, mementos, souvenirs, memory hunting?
Similarly, visual art exhibitions exploring themes of travel and interchange between cultures can be heavy and ponderous, with plenty of deeply significant insights to be communicated to the hapless gallery visitor. (Just think of the Johannesburg Bienniales!)
Mazungu Masai is different in this respect. Its basic premise is uncomplicated: the exhibition sets out to invert the obvious ways of displaying travel experiences by foregrounding the behaviour of the tourist, the guest, rather than that of the toured, the host. And it does so with a generous amount of self-conscious fun, enjoyment, avoidance perhaps intentional refusal of heaviness. On an even more rudimentary level, it is simply a visual record of a journey well enjoyed like an overgrown photo album or an overgrown school project.
Individual works on the exhibition an erratic conglomeration of drawings, paintings, photographs, collages, pastiches, a video, installations, postcards, objects and other items, food and an opening performance do not really bear analysis. One hesitates to think of them in isolation. One also hesitates to examine their technical particularities, despite the artist’s obvious creative skills.
Yet, as a whole, the exhibition works delightfully. It is anchored and given coherence by the one piece that could stand on its own, literally the heart of the exhibition, a mixed-media installation entitled Big 6. Filling a small room adjoining the central exhibition space, Big 6 is a representation of a lone sleeper in a sleeping bag, neon heart beating in serene harmony with deep electronic breathing, sheltered by a romantic mosquito net from a roomful of preciously crafted copper wire and hovering bead insects.
Gazing at the insects (too exquisite to denote malaria) the visitor realises that she/he has entered the dreamworld of the anonymous sleeper, and, by extension, so has everything else in the exhibition rooms of Ibis. Indeed, the sleeper turns the entire village of Nieu-Bethesda tourist mecca that it is into a dream, a traveller’s fantasy.
In such a halcyon world of travel as fun and enjoyment, who needs heavy intellectual engagement?