Eddie Chambers, 'Johannesburg'
In: Annotations 5: Run through the Jungle: Selected Writings by Eddie Chambers. Edited by Gilane Tawadros and Victoria Clarke. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999, pp. 49-55.
The Second Johannesburg Biennale is taking place in a country that, between the late 1940s and the early 1990s practiced the racist and discriminatory system of ‘separate development’ known as ‘apartheid’. Perhaps this legacy of apartheid uncomfortably and inevitably means, that as a Black person visiting the Second Johannesburg Biennale, my responses to it might, in some respects at least, differ from a white person’s response. Certainly, when it comes to discussing art, culture, identity and South Africa, metaphorically, we are not all on the same page. Indeed, taking the metaphor further, we are not all reading from the same book.
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Earlier this year, a white novelist, Justin Cartwright, wrote an article for The Guardian about the state of the arts in post-apartheid South Africa. Speaking like an arrogant bar-stool know-all, he declared that ‘the Johannesburg Art Gallery, surrounded by a park that once contained works of sculpture, now resembles a squatter encampment. To view the collection of South African art, you need to take a security man with you; it is simply not safe to walk in.’ For dramatic effect The Guardian ran the article with the heading ‘You need an armed guard to go into a gallery’. On my previous visits to Johannesburg, I have wandered in and out of the city’s Art Gallery on a number of occasions. Joubert Park, in which the Art Gallery is set, is always full of people doing what you would expect people to do in parks on hot sunny days. And I have never felt menaced whilst visiting the Art Gallery. Claiming that one needs an ‘armed guard’ and that the presence of Black South Africans has ruined the park and intimidated visitors is, again, as offensive as it is ridiculous. We are not reading from the same book.
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Perhaps more than anything, what defines these South African Biennales is the issue of power. What exercised me most, as a visitor to the Johannesburg Biennale was the issue of who ultimately had the power to set the terms of reference and define the ways in which this Biennale is constructed. Because, make no mistake, this Biennale (within its South African context) displays a breathtaking contempt for the sensibilities and the political concerns of Black (South) Africa. Enwezor’s Biennale catalogue essay mentions apartheid only twice, and only in passing. On the subject of apartheid’s legacy and how it has impacted on the politics of exhibitions within South Africa, Enwezor has nothing to say. And consider this: there has been no Black (South) African curatorial input into this Biennale whatsoever.
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The nearest that Black South Africa gets to being curatorially included in the Biennale is in the form of Colin Richards, a white curator, writer and senior lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. This point is important because the construction of this Biennale does nothing to interrupt the formidable set of cultural and political assumptions that disempower Black South Africans, regarding them as culturally worthless and lacking intellectual ability. So Black South Africans, with aspirations to curate exhibitions see those aspirations denied and trampled. But the worst of this only becomes apparent when we realise that Black South Africa is brutally marginalised twice over: Black South Africa, has, by and large, not been asked to participate in this Biennale and neither has Black South Africa been addressed by this Biennale.
According to the official press release, ‘The first Africus Johhanesburg Biennale took place in 1995 celebrating South Africa’s re-entry into the world cultural arena and coincided with the countries [sic] first anniversary of democracy.’ But this attempt to integrate South Africa into the so-called ‘international’ arena is, at this stage in the country’s history, akin to opening your home to legions of visitors when you have not done any building maintenance, cleaning or housekeeping for fifty odd years. The introduction of apartheid in 1948 inflicted colossal damage on the psyche and the fabric of South Africa. Within this context, one would have thought that the very last thing the country needed was a series of art exhibitions, particularly ones that perversely avoided, or failed to explicitly make mention of the state the country is in.
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It pains me to describe an exhibition as ‘politically correct’, as the term has been sorely abused and denigrated for years. But this exhibition is about as ‘pc’ as you can get. It’s another one of those wretched ‘we’re -all-complex- people -living-in-a-complex-world’ shows. Internationally, over the past few years, gallery-going audiences have been subjected to a belly-full of these preachy exhibitions. In the US, it started with Disputed Identities (1990). Then came Interrogating Identity (1991/92). Here, Shifting Borders, which Richard Hylton curated for the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1992 obliged us (within the context of the changing political landscape of Europe), to consider the issues of history and geography and how these things impacted on questions of identity. But then the floodgates truly opened, things got silly and we were treated to Who Do You Take Me For? (1992), Mistaken Identities (1992/93), Disrupted Borders (1994), Imagined Communities (1996/97), Translocations (1997) and Imaginary Boundaries (also 1997). Imagine all of these history/geography/identity exhibitions rolled into one and you have some idea of Alternating Currents.
Enwezor tells us that he flew all over God’s earth looking for artists to include in this exhibition, but evidence of genuine research is hard to ascertain, because Enwezor’s selection (and that of Zaya his co-curator) is quite a lazy one. Take for example the London contingent, which includes the likes of Yinka Shonibare, Steve McQueen, Isaac Julien, Vong Phaophanit, Sam Taylor-Wood and Mark Wallinger. These are all accomplished and successful artists whose work is already doing the rounds. If these British artists were Enwezor’s most original selection, that gives you some idea about the rest of the exhibition and the international artists represented in it.
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It is not sufficient to fly in a safe and predictable selection of ‘international’ artists who are already on the circuit and already taking part in these mega-exhibitions left, right and centre. Black South African artists within the country need to be respected, acknowledged and, above all, included. If South Africa wishes to reach out to the ‘international’ art world, why must this necessitate the contemptuous, widespread dismissal of so many artists and so many would-be curators located across the continent of Africa itself?