Abstract art and the contested ground of African modernisms
- Authors: Mumba, Patrick
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2515 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021165
- Description: This submission for a Masters of Fine Art consists of a thesis titled Abstract Art and the Contested Ground of African Modernisms developed as a document to support the exhibition Time in Between. The exhibition addresses the fact that nothing is permanent in life, and uses abstract paintings that reveal in-between time through an engagement with the processes of ageing and decaying. Life is always a temporary situation, an idea which I develop as Time in Between, the beginning and the ending, the young and the aged, the new and the old. In my painting practice I break down these dichotomies, questioning how abstractions engage with the relative notion of time and how this links to the processes of ageing and decaying in life. I relate this ageing process to the aesthetic process of moving from representational art to semi-abstract art, and to complete abstraction, when the object or material reaches a wholly unrecognisable stage. My practice is concerned not only with the aesthetics of these paintings but also, more importantly, with translating each specific theme into the formal qualities of abstraction. In my thesis I analyse abstraction in relation to ‘African Modernisms’ and critique the notion that African abstraction is not ‘African’ but a mere copy of Western Modernism. In response to this notion, I have used a study of abstraction to interrogate notions of so-called ‘African-ness’ or ‘Zambian-ness’, whilst simultaneously challenging the Western stereotypical view of African modern art. I have also related the theoretical and practical analysis of abstraction to scholarly debates on abstraction and ‘African Modernism’, arguing for multiple African Modernisms.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Boetie is verlore: the reproduction of militarized white masculinities through the lens of Boetie gaan border toe! (1984)
- Authors: Coetzee, Joseph
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4245 , vital:20638
- Description: My father fought for the South African Defence Force (SADF) from 1983 to 1985. At that time the apartheid regime was involved in extensive military operations in what is now Namibia and Angola. This conflict was aimed at quelling the liberation movements in those countries and, as Gary Baines has noted, supported the United States of America’s Cold War interests (Baines 2007:1). When I was fourteen I found a piece written by my father in which he remembers the first person that he had killed in the aforementioned conflict. This was a child soldier who he compared to me as I was a similar age at the time of his writing. The idea of my father as a killer haunted me. He has carried the trauma of his experiences on the border with him; he has told me how the dead visit him in dreams. On the one hand, these memories, not my own, have been constructed through my interpretation of the events in my father’s stories. On the other hand, homologies may be drawn between his actual experiences and a fantasy representation of the conflict I have encountered, the film Boetie gaan border toe! or Brother goes to the border! (1984). This apartheid propaganda film presents an idealised representation of the conflict from the point of view of the apartheid state. The protagonist of the film, Boetie, is an example of the aspirational and dominant image of militarised masculinity the apartheid state wished young white men to emulate. The racist sexist, patriarchal and materialistic reality created within the film is one I am familiar with. The toys I grew up playing with, television shows, films, advertising and popular culture I consumed, alongside the boys’ school I attended and the University I currently attend are all rooted in and continue to reproduce this reality. I have encountered many similar archetypes to the Boetie character. With this in mind I wish through my art practice to create a work which draws upon my father’s writing and imagery from Boetie gaan border toe! (1984). I have placed these alongside windows into my contemporary context in order to emphasise the continual reproduction of these ideas. In reference to the Boetie film I have decided to create my own film entitled Boetie is verlore or Brother is lost. This is a magic realist documentary film that I have constructed through various interviews and fantasy dream sequences in order to paint a picture of the continual incubation and reproduction of realities similar to that of Boetie. Boetie is a rich white man who is characterised through his material possessions and his compulsive heterosexuality. White women are interchangeable to him whilst blackness in the film is made completely invisible. In South Africa such representations are strongly linked to the question of land and naturalising the white male coloniser’s dominance and privilege.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Dominion: architecture as a symbol of authority in the Eastern Cape Colonial Frontier
- Authors: Mnyila, Desmond
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4256 , vital:20639
- Description: My mini thesis is an exploration of architecture as part of the landscape of Grahamstown and how ideas of dominion and subordination of the non- white citizens of this town were asserted or communicated through space. I concur with theories about architectural buildings as objects that express power and reinforce power relations in any given society. Markus (1993) goes into great lengths to explain how buildings are primarily about power and town planning is a means of control. The area under consideration is very rich in history especially during the period that interested me which is the nineteenth century as this was a period of the establishment of Grahamstown, firstly, as a military establishment and then as a small town serving as a residential area for the British Settlers who arrived in 1820. Throughout the mini thesis I have unpacked the nature of power itself by referring to Njoh (2009) who refers to different categories of the use and especially the abuse or demonstration of power. It wouldn’t do justice to an area as rich in history as the area which is now referred to as the Albany to not dwell into some of the events that were played out here, some of which had consequences and implications for the rest of South Africa. After 1820, the town developed as more buildings of domestic houses, churches, houses of officials, prisons and schools were built. In the thesis I unpack the different architectural styles like the Georgian, Victorian and Cape Dutch styles that formed a significant part of this small town. I draw attention to the ideas of dominion that Njoh elucidates, which were played out in the building of the town architectural structures. Architecture demonstrated British might and power through the imposition of British and European architectural styles on an African landscape. The sheer magnitude of the buildings, I argue, was carefully planned and the use of durable materials, often stones that were imported from abroad, was a carefully orchestrated move to demonstrate British wealth and power through intimidation and seduction. Thomas Baines was one of the artists who spent some time in Grahamstown and made a series of the landscape of this town. My interest in Baines for purposes of this thesis is the manner in which he represented Grahamstown and how he was propagator of British imperialism under the guise of ‘spreading civilisation’ among the ‘back ward’ inhabitants of this continent. My painting practice is influenced by and responds to the vacant land theory especially Baines’ works which were executed to present a Grahamstown as a purely British town ‘emptying’ it of all traces of non- British non- European dwellings or citizens. My practice brings back the layers of history that I have witnessed and the painting surface is slowly built up with water metaphorically destroying the solid structures that were built in the nineteenth century in Grahamstown. As a person who has lived through apartheid and a new dispensation in South Africa, this is reflected in my paintings with a tension between aesthetically pleasing painting styles and disturbing rough surface textures. Anselm Kiefer is the artist who has influenced my work in the manner of working he prefers and also in his tendency to look back at past periods in history.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Détournement : the art of troubling
- Authors: Wilby, Mark Owen
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/345 , vital:19950
- Description: Confidence in the form of, for example, commodified debt or the commodification of future value, is an increasingly large part of today’s globalised economy. This was alarmingly illustrated in 2008 by the repercussions of marketing unstable debt in the form of subprime mortgages in the United States leading to a precipitous global financial meltdown. That was a collapse of confidence writ large. At the same time, confidence is also a cornerstone of everyday social and professional life. The non-ZERO-sum project (exhibition title of practical submission in MFA fulfilment) interacts with the notion of confidence, and more particularly economic confidence. At the same time, the project takes the view that engagement from a fine art perspective would have an inherently inadequate vocabulary if restricted to a representative practice, and so a more interactive approach was sought. Research into the radical activism of the Situationists in the 1950s and 1960s, and particularly their tactic of détournement (the deliberate subversion of social or cultural practices), has informed and influenced the development of an interventionist technique summed up in this thesis as: The Art of Troubling. The Situationists had a dichotomous relationship with art. The group was initially made up mostly of artists and is in other instances referred to as an art movement. They saw art as the fulcrum for social and political change, and had their roots in the Dada, Surrealist, and Lettrist movements. As such, they also carried the genes of the notion of an anti-art, which varied in concept between art as a disruptive and propagandistic practice to the subsuming of art into other forms of social activity. This thesis, Détournement: The Art of Troubling, describes non-ZERO-sum as a bespoke methodology designed specifically for engagement with its particular topic. As such, the concept does not necessarily follow a template for situationist intervention. In 1962, a growing rift between the artists and the political theorists within the Situationist International tore the group in two. In conclusion of the non-ZERO-sum project, this thesis offers the observation that perhaps it was the political faction of the Situationists that had a more compelling idea of an art that functions through its very own subsumption.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Space Station: negotiating identities in the contemporary performance artscape
- Authors: Nott, Chiro Carolyn
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4233 , vital:20635
- Description: Being a part of various contemporary South African societies, we often find ourselves having to negotiate multiple dimensions of ourselves in our everyday lives amongst other culturally diverse people. These complex networks of identity, which define who we are, extend beyond the insular self into our daily interactions with others. This active methodology of existence requires social individuals to be able to embody a constant mobile identity, which when employed is not guaranteed to be socially successful. How then, do we cope with potential social failure and reflect on ourselves or our communal identities? For the submission of my Masters of Fine Art, I present the interactive exhibition, Space Station: a mini-golf art experience and the accompanying thesis,Space Station: Negotiating Identities in the Contemporary Performance Artscape. The exhibition manifests as a nine hole miniature golf course temporarily installed along a distance of unused train track in Grahamstown. The audience members’ or “players’” experiences of the exhibition draw attention to the subtle performances of everyday life as well as the ways in which identity is re-constructed through transitory mapped networking practices.The thesis interacts with the performed artwork, as not only a supporting text, but is activated, ‘performing’ in collaboration with the artwork’s temporary lived and present experiential journey. The thesis creates three fictional metaphoric characters: the pilgrim, the everyday migrant and the astral-bodied tourist who all negotiate contemporary urban space in order to explore ways in which mobile identity is socially practiced, developed and maintained.I argue that the Space Station audience member blurs between these characters, in the processes of ‘performing’ the game, by becoming the ‘player’. The research works alongside contemporary social environments to guide the audience and reader through positive self and socially reflective experiential processes to inspire rethinking around the interaction of habitual daily living.
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- Date Issued: 2016