The democratisation of art CAP as an alternative art space in South Africa
- Authors: Lochner, Eben
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Arts and society -- South Africa Democracy and the arts -- South Africa Art -- Political aspects -- South Africa Apartheid and art -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2409 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002205
- Description: While formal arts education was inaccessible to many during Apartheid, community-based centres played a significant role in the training of previously disadvantaged artists. By engaging in a socio-political critique of the history of South African art, this thesis argues that even though alternative art spaces are often marginalised, they remain essential to the diversification and democratisation of contemporary South African art today with its re-entry into the international art scene. According to Lize van Robbroeck (2004:52), “some of the fundamental ideals of community arts need to be revised to enrich, democratize and diversify [South Africa's] cultural practice.” The aim of my Thesis is to investigate this statement in relation to the contribution the Community Arts Project (CAP) in Cape Town (1977-2003). CAP and other art centres have played an indispensable role in the establishment of black artists and in producing a locally reflective artistic practice in South Africa, even into the 21st century. Through researching the changes the organisation underwent between the 1980s and 1990s, the ways in which such art centres constantly need to respond to the changing sociopolitical landscape around them become clear. Within South Africa these centres were seen to play a significant part in the liberation struggle and then later in nation building. While these centres were well supported by foreign donors in the late 1980s, such funding was withdrawn in 1991 and the majority of art centres collapsed, illustrating to some degree that the training of artist was not valued outside the context of the struggle against apartheid. By interviewing key people and by reading documentation stored at the Manuscripts and Archives department of UCT I have discovered some of the different benefits and hindrances of working in community art centres both during and after Apartheid. This thesis argues that these centres still play a vital role in contributing to the development of South Africa's local art practice and should not be relegated to the sideline.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Lochner, Eben
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Arts and society -- South Africa Democracy and the arts -- South Africa Art -- Political aspects -- South Africa Apartheid and art -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2409 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002205
- Description: While formal arts education was inaccessible to many during Apartheid, community-based centres played a significant role in the training of previously disadvantaged artists. By engaging in a socio-political critique of the history of South African art, this thesis argues that even though alternative art spaces are often marginalised, they remain essential to the diversification and democratisation of contemporary South African art today with its re-entry into the international art scene. According to Lize van Robbroeck (2004:52), “some of the fundamental ideals of community arts need to be revised to enrich, democratize and diversify [South Africa's] cultural practice.” The aim of my Thesis is to investigate this statement in relation to the contribution the Community Arts Project (CAP) in Cape Town (1977-2003). CAP and other art centres have played an indispensable role in the establishment of black artists and in producing a locally reflective artistic practice in South Africa, even into the 21st century. Through researching the changes the organisation underwent between the 1980s and 1990s, the ways in which such art centres constantly need to respond to the changing sociopolitical landscape around them become clear. Within South Africa these centres were seen to play a significant part in the liberation struggle and then later in nation building. While these centres were well supported by foreign donors in the late 1980s, such funding was withdrawn in 1991 and the majority of art centres collapsed, illustrating to some degree that the training of artist was not valued outside the context of the struggle against apartheid. By interviewing key people and by reading documentation stored at the Manuscripts and Archives department of UCT I have discovered some of the different benefits and hindrances of working in community art centres both during and after Apartheid. This thesis argues that these centres still play a vital role in contributing to the development of South Africa's local art practice and should not be relegated to the sideline.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Moving through the city : Cape Town's legacy of slavery and the performance of creolised carnival
- Authors: Nsele, Zamansele
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Carnival -- South Africa -- Cape Town , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Economic conditions , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Social conditions , Cape Town -- Economic conditions , Cape Town -- Social conditions , Slavery -- South Africa -- Cape Town , Stereotypes (Social psychology -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2489 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012977
- Description: After South Africa entered into democracy in 1994, a mediation period of change was set in motion. It was an invitation for South Africans to imagine and envision themselves anew (Gqola 2010). Slave memory; a neglected past, that was previously silenced came to the fore and is currently in the process of being renegotiated in post-apartheid South Africa. In the light of this, I believe that the study of the Cape Minstrel Carnival which has its social roots in slavery lends itself for an insightful interpretation within an art historical framework. While institutionally the memory of slavery was officially marginalized: comparatively, on the streets of Cape Town, the community preserved it in elusive ways embodied in the procession of Carnival through the city. This thesis explores the imagery of creolisation, through an analysis of the Cape Minstrel Carnival. Zimitri Erasmus (Erasmus 200:14) defines creolisation as cultural production that happens under the specific conditions of slavery. Before I decode some of the motifs embedded in the imagery of creolisation, in chapter one I provide an in depth analysis; of the contextual conditions of which the practice of carnival originated. My analysis is informed extensively by post-colonial theories on race, identity, and creolisation. The route of the procession of carnival reveals an alternative and clandestine history of the city of Cape Town which I believe deserves focus. In chapter two I discuss its site specificity in relation to key urban sites, such as the District Six Museum, the Slave Lodge Museum and the Bo-Kaap Museum. This thesis explores the use of performance as a corporeal tool to demarcate the city. In the process of this analysis, a repertoire of movement becomes salient in the construction of creolised identities. In chapter three I discuss the motif of the “coon” as the most salient image of creolisation in the parade; I trace its iconographic roots to the performance of blackface minstrelsy that originated from the slave plantations of the United States of America. By unpacking the racist iconography bound up in the initial construction of the “coon”, it becomes clear that its derogative meaning was subverted when it was appropriated as a symbol of celebration into the New Year’s parades. As a result of its complicated history, some residents deride the parade as perpetuating racial stereotypes, by portraying “coloured” people as buffoons. Class snobbery has played a big part in the criticism. Therefore the procession of “the coons” or euphemistically the minstrels represents a cultural cringe for some and a festive celebration for others and both these sentiments coexist simultaneously. The Cape Town Minstrel Carnival can be interpreted on multiple shifting levels because it takes on an ambivalent and ambiguous position as far as meaning is concerned.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Nsele, Zamansele
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Carnival -- South Africa -- Cape Town , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Economic conditions , Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Social conditions , Cape Town -- Economic conditions , Cape Town -- Social conditions , Slavery -- South Africa -- Cape Town , Stereotypes (Social psychology -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2489 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012977
- Description: After South Africa entered into democracy in 1994, a mediation period of change was set in motion. It was an invitation for South Africans to imagine and envision themselves anew (Gqola 2010). Slave memory; a neglected past, that was previously silenced came to the fore and is currently in the process of being renegotiated in post-apartheid South Africa. In the light of this, I believe that the study of the Cape Minstrel Carnival which has its social roots in slavery lends itself for an insightful interpretation within an art historical framework. While institutionally the memory of slavery was officially marginalized: comparatively, on the streets of Cape Town, the community preserved it in elusive ways embodied in the procession of Carnival through the city. This thesis explores the imagery of creolisation, through an analysis of the Cape Minstrel Carnival. Zimitri Erasmus (Erasmus 200:14) defines creolisation as cultural production that happens under the specific conditions of slavery. Before I decode some of the motifs embedded in the imagery of creolisation, in chapter one I provide an in depth analysis; of the contextual conditions of which the practice of carnival originated. My analysis is informed extensively by post-colonial theories on race, identity, and creolisation. The route of the procession of carnival reveals an alternative and clandestine history of the city of Cape Town which I believe deserves focus. In chapter two I discuss its site specificity in relation to key urban sites, such as the District Six Museum, the Slave Lodge Museum and the Bo-Kaap Museum. This thesis explores the use of performance as a corporeal tool to demarcate the city. In the process of this analysis, a repertoire of movement becomes salient in the construction of creolised identities. In chapter three I discuss the motif of the “coon” as the most salient image of creolisation in the parade; I trace its iconographic roots to the performance of blackface minstrelsy that originated from the slave plantations of the United States of America. By unpacking the racist iconography bound up in the initial construction of the “coon”, it becomes clear that its derogative meaning was subverted when it was appropriated as a symbol of celebration into the New Year’s parades. As a result of its complicated history, some residents deride the parade as perpetuating racial stereotypes, by portraying “coloured” people as buffoons. Class snobbery has played a big part in the criticism. Therefore the procession of “the coons” or euphemistically the minstrels represents a cultural cringe for some and a festive celebration for others and both these sentiments coexist simultaneously. The Cape Town Minstrel Carnival can be interpreted on multiple shifting levels because it takes on an ambivalent and ambiguous position as far as meaning is concerned.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
The "other" Africans : re-examining representations of sexuality in the work of Nicholas Hlobo and Zanele Muholi
- Authors: Makhubu, Nomusa
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Hlobo, Nicholas Muholi, Zanele Women in art Photography, Artistic Homosexuality in art Sex in art Performance art Art, African
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2410 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002206
- Description: Nicholas Hlobo, a sculptor and performance artist, and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and activist, explore different ways of representing sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It is extremely difficult to discuss African sexuality in light of the stain of colonial attitudes that have exoticised and ascribed hypersexuality to African bodies. Moreover, sexuality is often not discussed in the construction of so-called African traditions and this has contributed to rendering African-ness as an exclusive identity. Tensions within and between categories of African-ness are compounded by constituted regulations. For example, Hlobo investigates the obligation of circumcision which seems to contrast the lifestyle and contexts in which he works and resides, and Muholi represents the existence of homosexual and transgender relations, even within conservative categories. The visual imagery of these two artists investigates the boundaries set by different social constructs. These set boundaries have also affected crimes against bisexual, transgender and homosexual individuals, which are reaching an alarming rate. Hlobo questions the validity of structures that marginalise homosexual individuals through drawing attention to the ambivalence of certain statutes. Muholi seeks to publicise the injustices imposed upon homosexual individuals in order to demonstrate the weight of that crisis. Although the South African legal system condones liberated expressions of sexual identity, due to social prejudices homosexual individuals are still treated as if they are not entitled to basic human rights. As a result, hate-crimes are not reported, and when they are they are not taken seriously. Hlobo and Muholi not only bring these issues to light, but also point out the dilemma inscribed in the social and political history of (South) Africa with regards to collective and individual identities. This thesis seeks to provide an analysis of the visual language used by Hlobo and Muholi to subvert the notion that homosexuality is “un-African” and to complicate concepts of gender, sexuality and identity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Makhubu, Nomusa
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Hlobo, Nicholas Muholi, Zanele Women in art Photography, Artistic Homosexuality in art Sex in art Performance art Art, African
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2410 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002206
- Description: Nicholas Hlobo, a sculptor and performance artist, and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and activist, explore different ways of representing sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It is extremely difficult to discuss African sexuality in light of the stain of colonial attitudes that have exoticised and ascribed hypersexuality to African bodies. Moreover, sexuality is often not discussed in the construction of so-called African traditions and this has contributed to rendering African-ness as an exclusive identity. Tensions within and between categories of African-ness are compounded by constituted regulations. For example, Hlobo investigates the obligation of circumcision which seems to contrast the lifestyle and contexts in which he works and resides, and Muholi represents the existence of homosexual and transgender relations, even within conservative categories. The visual imagery of these two artists investigates the boundaries set by different social constructs. These set boundaries have also affected crimes against bisexual, transgender and homosexual individuals, which are reaching an alarming rate. Hlobo questions the validity of structures that marginalise homosexual individuals through drawing attention to the ambivalence of certain statutes. Muholi seeks to publicise the injustices imposed upon homosexual individuals in order to demonstrate the weight of that crisis. Although the South African legal system condones liberated expressions of sexual identity, due to social prejudices homosexual individuals are still treated as if they are not entitled to basic human rights. As a result, hate-crimes are not reported, and when they are they are not taken seriously. Hlobo and Muholi not only bring these issues to light, but also point out the dilemma inscribed in the social and political history of (South) Africa with regards to collective and individual identities. This thesis seeks to provide an analysis of the visual language used by Hlobo and Muholi to subvert the notion that homosexuality is “un-African” and to complicate concepts of gender, sexuality and identity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
The Kinshasa-based Kin ArtStudio in the Democratic Republic of Congo: visual arts spaces and the potential to challenge global art's representative and legitimizing mechanisms
- Tshilumba Mukendi, Jean-Sylvain
- Authors: Tshilumba Mukendi, Jean-Sylvain
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Space (Art) , Art -- Congo (Democratic Republic) , Art and globalization , Postcolonialism and the arts -- Congo (Democratic Republic) , Arts, Modern -- 21st century , Arts publicity , Arts, Modern -- 21st century -- Economic aspects , Arts, Modern -- 21st century -- Social aspects , Bondo, Vitshois Mwilambwe , Kin ArtStudio , Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115050 , vital:34073
- Description: The emergence of visual art spaces over the past few decades on the African continent invites art practitioners, historians and critics to re-examine the conditions of production, diffusion and reception of contemporary art of Africa. In this thesis I critically engage with these conditions in relation to artworks and practices of the Democratic Republic of Congo, considering the curatorial logic that has governed the ‘global art world’. I focus on the Kin ArtStudio as my main case study. I undertook research within this art space in 2016, from the 10th of April to the 15th of June, and again from the 16th of July to the 12th of September. My position as a participant observer turned out to be as engaging as informative. The Kin ArtStudio is a Kinshasa-based visual art platform founded in 2011 by the Congolese artist Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo. It was established out of the will to empower emerging artists in that specific context, and facilitate the negotiation that the legitimization of their creations entails in today’s global art and cultural dynamics. In order to evaluate the stakes of such negotiation, I start with reviewing the existing mechanisms, trends and networks that have legitimized visual art productions of the Democratic Republic of Congo on a global stage, as exemplified by the Beauté Congo – Congo Kitoko exhibition (2015). Then, my enquiry evolves towards specificity, towards the immediacy and the subjectivity that characterize Kinshasa's urban and socio-cultural context, and visual art practices therein. Subjectivity also applies to my four months immersive experience with that art space. Drawing from my observations, setbacks, hopes and recent academic and practical debates around contemporary art practices on the African continent, the role those art spaces can play in the curatorship, circulation, reception and commodification of contemporary art productions cannot be underestimated. While operating in lasting postcolonial settings, they are going through the negotiation of their global and translocal situatedness, which can in turn lead to new legitimizing narratives. These will more appropriately inform understandings of contemporary art practices of Africa, challenging the identifying prism sustained by the ‘global art world’.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Tshilumba Mukendi, Jean-Sylvain
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Space (Art) , Art -- Congo (Democratic Republic) , Art and globalization , Postcolonialism and the arts -- Congo (Democratic Republic) , Arts, Modern -- 21st century , Arts publicity , Arts, Modern -- 21st century -- Economic aspects , Arts, Modern -- 21st century -- Social aspects , Bondo, Vitshois Mwilambwe , Kin ArtStudio , Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115050 , vital:34073
- Description: The emergence of visual art spaces over the past few decades on the African continent invites art practitioners, historians and critics to re-examine the conditions of production, diffusion and reception of contemporary art of Africa. In this thesis I critically engage with these conditions in relation to artworks and practices of the Democratic Republic of Congo, considering the curatorial logic that has governed the ‘global art world’. I focus on the Kin ArtStudio as my main case study. I undertook research within this art space in 2016, from the 10th of April to the 15th of June, and again from the 16th of July to the 12th of September. My position as a participant observer turned out to be as engaging as informative. The Kin ArtStudio is a Kinshasa-based visual art platform founded in 2011 by the Congolese artist Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo. It was established out of the will to empower emerging artists in that specific context, and facilitate the negotiation that the legitimization of their creations entails in today’s global art and cultural dynamics. In order to evaluate the stakes of such negotiation, I start with reviewing the existing mechanisms, trends and networks that have legitimized visual art productions of the Democratic Republic of Congo on a global stage, as exemplified by the Beauté Congo – Congo Kitoko exhibition (2015). Then, my enquiry evolves towards specificity, towards the immediacy and the subjectivity that characterize Kinshasa's urban and socio-cultural context, and visual art practices therein. Subjectivity also applies to my four months immersive experience with that art space. Drawing from my observations, setbacks, hopes and recent academic and practical debates around contemporary art practices on the African continent, the role those art spaces can play in the curatorship, circulation, reception and commodification of contemporary art productions cannot be underestimated. While operating in lasting postcolonial settings, they are going through the negotiation of their global and translocal situatedness, which can in turn lead to new legitimizing narratives. These will more appropriately inform understandings of contemporary art practices of Africa, challenging the identifying prism sustained by the ‘global art world’.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
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