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7/4/2002

Transmigrations

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria

At the Pretoria Art Museum DASART will be exhibiting Transmigrations from 8 April. This cross-cultural exhibition combines the art and ideas of thirteen contemporary South African artists with a Canadian and an American artist. Transmigrations has returned from exhibitions in Los Angeles and Tijuana, where it was nominated for the Premios Cultura 1999 award. After Pretoria the exhibition will travel to the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein (Sept - Nov 2002), the Ann Bryant Art Gallery, East London (Nov - Jan 2003), the Durban Art Gallery and the Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg (dates to be confirmed).

Dasart is an artist's collective concerned with reinvigorating the social dimension of art to counter the degradation of the environment and nurture a universal sense of identity. The artists use their art to communicate aspects of South African life that range from religious to political and sexual expressions. Artists from other countries and regions are invited to participate, thus gaining a personal stake and enriching the joint communiqué. Each exhibition therefore has different work.

The concept relates to story-telling in the belief that the many levels within myth and enchantment are vital to our well-being. Western ways of seeing accept the culturally familiar and reject as superstitious that which is culturally 'divergent'. In South Africa, it is necessary to understand and respect one another before we can project a mutual state of being. The works on show all express the authority of the object since we experience things through the medium of the body. Objects are delimited energies that stand still long enough for us to take an emotional impression off them. The exhibition offers a unique perspective on the diversity of South African art experience, ranging from psychotherapy to intermingling of cultures, art derived from rural craft, myth and enchantment, the legacy of Colonialism and Apartheid.

Sasha Fabris' Games Ubiquitous are wood carvings of corn cob penises and rituals of grinding. She uses the woodcarving technique therapeutically to cope with sexual experiences that are extrapolated to gender power struggles. The Musallah by Rookeya Gardee consists of seven prayer mats constructed out of seeds, spices, rice and other items originating from a domestic environment. A cross-cultural mix of Muslims collaborated with her and the finished piece hints at their diverse origins. Reliquary for an Eggbeater is a quirky work by Gordon Froud which sees the eggbeater as a domestic symbol, both cage and liberator. A large wire eggbeater is suspended within a polycarbonate vitrine. Plastic Barbiedoll parts are caught within the splines, reminiscent of sexual bondage. Eight smaller eggbeaters fashioned out of beercans flutter around the perimeters while multi-coloured plastic plates filled with spices and legumes, displayed like hawkers' wares on South African pavements, possess the floor. Other plates attached to the sides of the vitrine have universal symbols cut into them that provide tantalising glimpses of the contents within.

The shifting power and gender relations in South Africa provoke Nkosinathi Khanyile, who is concerned with the social predicament of rural Zulu women. His installation, entitled Isintu, is a collaboration between the artist and craftswomen. The woven grass pillars he makes, daubed with mud and dung, are not intended as phallic symbols but are derived from traditional African dolls and reaffirm feminine spiritual power. He seeks to re-establish the myth of womanhood as the epitome of the Earth Mother by the use of certain shapes and the emphasis on feminine crafts like weaving and beadwork.

Bob Cnoops is a photographer who composes with ritual imagery derived from African tribal customs. He uses the cyanotype photographic process and exposes onto handmade paper. His interest in this theme stems from a course he attended on African Divination techniques. Such shamanic intentions also inform Ania Krajewski's kites in the The Mediators. The kites are seen as mythological intermediaries between the Gods and Earth. Their function is to take imprints of the Earth and thus they are visceral with allusions to animal hides; tortured and burned in reference to the abuse of world resources.

The 3-D soil paintings of Nhlanhla Mbatha are about cracks and the documentation thereof, particularly related to plate tectonics and ancient Gondwanaland. James De Villiers' Architecture of Air, combines traditional oil paintings of clouds with computer generated air sounds. Wim Botha's sculptures are carved out of prison release papers and other documents that regulate human movement. A suspended, androgynous figure, hovering between growth and decay, confronts a Sable head mounted like a trophy, thus contrasting ideas of freedom and classification and evoking the spectre of death.

Several artists are concerned with the legacy of Apartheid and Colonialism. Diane Victor's charcoal drawings deal with the revelations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Rankadi Mosako paints industrial landscapes that contrast first and third world experience of technology. His paintings suggest a barbed-wire barrier to social advancement. Ashley Johnson's piece, The Bullet, symbolises the ongoing intercourse between Western Civilisation and Africa. The kinetic aspect of a huge bullet striking an earthy, primitive torso, which opens to allow a tree with a head to fall forward, is a jarring image of modern experience.

Michael Matthews' videos deal with violence in Kwazulu-Natal as in Jazzcows (Part III:Weapon) which uses rough drawings of the emergency symbols in a telephone directory alongside an insidious soundtrack. Another video, Women thru Women thru Men, explores media rituals of how women are represented in magazines. His three paintings called Cultural Symbols: Afterimage I, II, and III, are of a softer, more sensual nature and deal with the transposition of ethnic cultural symbols into fine art. David Hlynsky is a Canadian artist who will be showing digital prints. The images were taken on a recent visit to South Africa and represent David's response to the experience. Margi Scharff is an American artist who travels to and lives in Third World countries. She documents her experiences in book form and makes art out of any debris she finds. At present she is in Asia and her collages are from this journey.

Image: Bob Cnoops, Ritual Imaginery

Cor. Schoeman and Wessels Streets Arcadia Park 0083 Pretoria
Republic of South Africa
Visiting Hours: Tuesday to Saturday: 10:00 - 17:00
Sunday: 12:00 - 17:00
Wednesday: 10:00 - 20:00
Closed on Mondays and Public Holidays
Further information on Transmigrations: Rituals and Items as well as archival information on Dasart can be accessed at web site

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