FEATURE / FNB JoburgArtFair
SYMPTOMS
ARTICULATED
AS OBJECTS
FNB JoburgArtFair 2015
by Ashraf Jamal
In Ways of Looking: How To Experience Contemporary Art
Ossian Ward notes that “More than ever before, looking
has become a matter of Darwinian survival – only the
strongest images make the grade, and even then we only
give a cursory glance to what we think we’re seeing…
Much of our culture, infused as it is with the multisensory
slap-in-the-face shorthand as our hurried existences, can
be difficult to look at or get a grip on.”
This slap-in-the-face reaches overdrive in the context of
an art fair; a pop-up souk, maze, elliptic mirage, in which
we find ourselves reeling under the manic weight of affect.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that we find ourselves barely
able to settle upon a feeling, let alone a thought, regarding
the emporia in which we, like the poet Stevie Smith, find
ourselves “not waving but drowning.”
A simulacral abyss, art fairs are anxious enterprises in
which dealers and their assistants feign calm under a
pulsing red light; visitors loiter, prattle, drift; buyers – the
revered few – breeze about with a probity as coolly cynical
as it is decadent. But art fairs, at their best, are never merely
dealerships; they concentrate a fickle, even schizophrenic
energy, upon an idea.
In the South African and sub-Saharan context the FNB
JoburgArtFair, under Lucy MacGarry’s directorship,
proved a worthy contender on the ideational front. What
it sought to fulfil was the dream of a reconstructed Africa
which challenged essences as much as it refused neat
objectifications of place, identity, selfhood or race.
As Takashi Murakami’s dealer Jeff Poe wryly remarked in
Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World, “At the end
of the day our business is to sell symptoms articulated as
objects.” What then are the symptoms which emerged
beneath the convivial gloss of the FNB JoburgArtFair?
Perhaps J.M. Coetzee, in White Writing, expressed it best
when, in his response to South Africa’s identity crisis –
including his own (he was yet to write his scandalous
opus Disgrace) – he noted the emergence of a world which
was “No longer European, not yet African.” It is this
interregnum, this intransitive moment which, I think, best
describes the ongoing deferred clarity which plagues our
art world.
Caught between the banal narrative of nationhood, the
fantasy of Africanity and the yearning to fully enter a
globalised world, the FNB JoburgArtFair in effect proved
an eloquently pained and confused answer.
The question raised by Koyo Kouoh in Condition Report:
Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa persisted:
“How is Africa after fifty years of independence, really
determining its artistic landscape?” While Simon Njami
added the caveat: “Can we grasp the needs of our times
with contemporary tools? Can we move beyond the
codification of a monolithic history of the world that
is outrageously simplified? Can we change the analytic
Georgina Gratrix, Princess Selfie, 2015. Oil on Board, 70 x 50cm. Courtesy of SMAC gallery.
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SYMPTOMS ARTICULATED AS OBJECTS / ASHRAF JAMAL
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FEATURE / FNB JoburgArtFair
Ed Young’s I See Black
People as installed at the
FNB Joburg Art Fair 2015.
Courtesy of SMAC Gallery.
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Turiya Magadlela, iMaid ka Lova 3, 2015. Nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 100 x 100cm.
Turiya Magadlela, I never made Swan Lake 13, 2015. Nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 150 x 150cm.
Turiya Magadlela, iMaid ka Lova 4, 2015. Nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 100 x 100cm.
Turiya Magadlela, I never made Swan Lake 15, 2015. Nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 150 x 150cm.
SYMPTOMS ARTICULATED AS OBJECTS / ASHRAF JAMAL
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FEATURE / FNB JoburgArtFair
schemas whose purpose was to lock
identities into geographic essentialisms?”
Just how ‘African’ is African art? How
transcultural? How diasporic? It would seem
that each of these questions has proved
critical to MacGarry’s directorship, for while
fairs favour the more powerful dealerships, it
was clear that MacGarry’s greater focus was
directed to brokering a novel Esperanto in
which African art could assume what Njami
termed ‘a new global citizenship.’ In other
words, MacGarry was not merely rebooting
a ‘new scramble for Africa’ – an unfortunate
phrase at best – but seeking to articulate the
reality, after Alexander Dorner, of Africa as
‘a power station, a producer of new energy.’
At the fair, it was evident that African art
was not merely a rebooted plaything, sex
toy or fetish, but a potent resource in-andthrough which to change global – largely
Western and Occidental – perceptions.
And here the winner of the FNB Art
Prize, Turiya Magadlela, epitomised this
brilliant push forward. Abstract works made
with stitched squares of laddered, broken
pantyhose, Magadlela’s work reinforced the
links between up-cycling and innovation –
key to both Africa’s design and art worlds.
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On the other hand, there was a painting by
Georgina Gratrix (exhibited by SMAC) –
strikingly gaudy, thickly painted, encrusted
with rhinestones – which captured the
mystique of a visceral, ugly, irresistible
African unconscious. But then again, more
pastiche than parody, in this work Gratrix’s
‘Africa’ becomes a thing de-activated,
powerless, yet nevertheless utterly haunting.
Thickly descriptive, it conveyed an ‘Africa’ at
once fathomless and curiously vapid.
In striking contrast SMAC also gave us
Ed Young’s biting white on black textwork, I SEE BLACK PEOPLE. Gauche,
tactless and ugly-yet-true, this work caused
great consternation, anxiety, outrage and
despair. But once again, a work tapped the
unconscious and unstated whiteness of the
South African art world in which the catchall, ‘black people’ – a generic, dehumanised
descriptor which denies singularity or
complexity – reaffirmed an age-old
discriminatory and reductive lens.
If SMAC proved an aggressive theatre,
others such as Johans Borman and the
Barnard Gallery created edified and
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sacramental worlds which enshrined
Modernism and Impressionism respectively.
As pop-up spaces go, these were remarkably
elegant. With paintings by Alexia Vogel,
the Barnard Gallery created a church; while
against a grey backdrop Johans Borman
gave us richly drenched oil paintings – by
Irma Stern, George Pemba, Cecil Skotnes,
SYMPTOMS ARTICULATED AS OBJECTS / ASHRAF JAMAL
Richard Mudariki, Owusu-Ankomah, and
Hennie Niemann Jnr – exquisitely off-set by
Anthony Lane’s dripping metal sculptures.
While Modernist African art has maintained
its global traction – also evident on the
Everard Read stand where, surprisingly,
Nigel Mullins’ ingenious oil painting of
Queen Victoria did not sell – it was that
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Nigel Mullins, For Rational Aspirations, 2015. Oil on superwood, found objects and wire, 107 x 56cm. Courtesy of Everard Read Cape Town.
Johans Borman Fine Art stand at FNB Joburg Art Fair 2015.© Johans Borman Fine Art. Courtesy of Johans Borman Fine Art.
Anthony Lane, Lying figure II, 2014. Aluminium and stainless steel, 192 x 113 x 104cm. © Johans Borman Fine Art. Courtesy of Johans Borman Fine Art.
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FEATURE / FNB JoburgArtFair
Portia Zvavahera, I can feel it in my eyes [13], 2015. Oil-based printing ink and oil bar on canvas, 230 x 263cm. ©STEVENSON. Courtesy of STEVENSON.
strange attractor, dubbed ‘contemporary,’
which ruled the roost.
sought to conjure – the sublimity of a
moment in search of itself.
Here it was the Stevenson Gallery, the hub
for the potent Zimbabwean fauvist painter
Portia Zavavahera, and WhatIfTheWorld
which proved the most comprehensive
brokers
of
symptoms.
Athi-Patra
Ruga’s bling figure, a sculptural echo of
Gratrix’s toxic portrait, dominated the
WhatIfTheWorld stand and proved a smart
counterpoint to Mohau Modisakeng’s
triptych from his ‘Metamorphosis’ series.
Monochromatic, enigmatic, soulful and
seductive, Modisakeng’s di-bonded triptych
seemed to perform the spirit that MacGarry
In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
beautifully articulates this moment: “It is in
the zone of occult instability that the people
dwell and the revolution comes from.” At its
best, the FNB JoburgArtFair proved to be
this zone. For while, after Coetzee, we have
the sense of a world “no longer European,
not yet African,” we also have the rider, a
world in the throes of rediscovering what it
means to be African.
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That world, as stated earlier, must necessarily
also be global and diasporic. Africa, or
SYMPTOMS ARTICULATED AS OBJECTS / ASHRAF JAMAL
matters, drives or objects deemed ‘African’
are also, in this rapidly morphing art world,
global. As Hans Ulrich Obrist reminds us, we
are dealing with “a plurality of temporalities
across space, a plurality of experiences and
pathways through modernity that continues
to this day, and on a truly global scale …
We are now living through a period in which
the centre of gravity is transferring to new
worlds.”
South Africa is one such new world. As a
platform, its dealerships, fairs and auction
houses are increasingly assuming a greater
world-wide leverage. Everard Read’s
CIRCA-London (due to open in Chelsea in
Athi-Patra Ruga, THE EVER PROMISED ERECTION, 2015. High-density foam, artificial flowers and jewels, 133 x 100 x 70cm. Courtesy of the artist and WHATIFTHEWORLD.
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FEATURE / FNB JoburgArtFair
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Mohau Modisakeng, UNTITLED (METAMORPHOSIS 7), 2015. Inkjet print on Epson Ultra Smooth, 120 x 120cm.
Mohau Modisakeng, UNTITLED (METAMORPHOSIS 8), 2015. Inkjet print on Epson Ultra Smooth, 120 x 120cm.
Mohau Modisakeng, UNTITLED (METAMORPHOSIS 5), 2015. Inkjet print on Epson Ultra Smooth, 120 x 120cm.
Athi-Patra Ruga, …A VIGIL FOR MAYIBUYE (FROM EXILE SERIES), 2015. Archival ink-jet print on Photo Rag Baryta, 150 x 190cm.
All images courtesy of the respective artists and WHATIFTHEWORLD.
February next year) is a case in point, as
is the deepening presence of 1:54 – with
its tentacles in New York – and the newly
minted AKAA – ‘Also Known as Africa’ –
in Paris. In these and other ‘power stations’
we are seeing the emergence of an occult
zone in which art – as an energy line, affect
or symptom – is redefining taste, principle
and value.
For me, one of the most striking gamechangers at the FNB JoburgArtFair was
nineteen year old Tony Gum, represented
by the Christopher Moller Gallery. An
instagrammer, performance artist and
photographer, Gum seemed to have
exorcised all demons to blithely announce
a secular worldliness. Purged of anxiety,
trauma and self-doubt, Gum – a poster
girl for the fair – gave us works which
effortlessly fused tradition and post-
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SYMPTOMS ARTICULATED AS OBJECTS / ASHRAF JAMAL
postmodernity. Self-portraits all, her
images redefined the ubiquity of CocaCola, and brands more generally, and,
through a brilliant reworking of the image
and myth of Frida Kalho, replaced pain
with uproarious levity.
After Julian Stallabrass, Gum’s artworks are
‘High Art Lite.’ Driven by the digital sphere,
Gum, after J.M. Ledgard, reminds us that
“Connectivity is given: it is coming and
happening and spreading in Africa whether
or not factories get built or young people
find jobs. Culture is being formed online
as well as on the street: for the foreseeable
future, the African voice is going to get
louder, while the voice of ageing Europe
quietens.”
Whether or not you agree, there is no
disputing the fact that networking,
flexibility, open source and flow are the
determining factors in changing the fate
of Africa, together with its vast youthful
population. To understand how Africa can
be changed – the core question posed by
Lucy MacGarry – we must never shirk the
fact that we are dealing with symptoms
articulated as objects.
Ashraf Jamal is a Cape Townbased cultural analyst, writer and
educator. He is the former editor of
ARTsouthAFRICA
and
currently
lectures in Film & Media Studies at
Cape Peninsula University of Cape
Town (CPUT).
The FNB JoburgArtFair ran from 11-13
September 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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