South Africa: The Art of a Nation- The British Museum
By Richard Fitzwilliams
Jeni Couzyn( artistic director), Sandra Sweers( lead artist), The Creation of the Sun, a collaborative piece from Bethesda Arts Centre, textile, 2015, © The Bethesda Foundation Limited( 2015).
South Africa: The Art of a Nation- The British Museum
The purpose of this exhibition is to show how art in South Africa has depicted momentous events in its history and how its past, which has often been so violent and so cruel, has influenced the work of its contemporary artists. our human ancestors which date back three million years. These inspired Karel Nel’ s marvellous work Taung in 1985, a dazzling kaleidoscope of colour which celebrates the evolution of the species from its African beginnings.
The first works we see are undoubtedly unique. Rock paintings by the San / Bushmen people are wondrous examples of early art. There is also the extraordinary Makapansgat Pebble of Many Faces which was placed with the Australopithecine Africanus fossil skeletons of
The art of the indigenous African peoples was largely ignored under white rule. Little known figurative carvings such as the Lydenburg Head and the Kenilworth Head as well as the quirky Shroda clay figurines and gold artefacts from the royal graves in Mapungubwe, the site of the first southern African kingdom, are displayed here. These are fascinating.
Art in South Africa is inevitably linked to political struggle and the powerful Song of the Pick by Gerard Sekoto and the satirical Extra!, 2011 by white artist Candice Breitz are amongst the best works. In the latter, Breitz appears in a black television soap but is ignored by the other actors which is symbolic of the marginalization of the whites today. The mix of artefacts in this show is quite extraordinary and includes a magnificent Xhosa woman’ s cloak and a necklace once worn by Nelson Mandela.
Gold rhino. From Mapungubwe, capital of the first kingdom in southern Africa, c. AD 1220 – 1290. Department of Arts © University of Pretoria.
The colonial period lasted for nearly 400 years but the displays linked to it are too small. Any contribution by white artists before the end of apartheid is minimal. There is, for example, nothing by Irma Stern who is internationally known, which is ridiculous. This exhibition is also badly let down by the labelling of much of the work which is far too polemical. Much of the art rightly rages against racial injustice but what this exhibition shows is that there is also a need for a more inclusive show which represents the different periods in South Africa’ s troubled past in a more balanced way. Nelson Mandela’ s creation, the Rainbow Nation, certainly deserves it.
28 THE LONDON & UK DATEBOOK