WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

Had you visited Trade Routes, curated by Okwui Enwezor
at the Electric Workshop for the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale,
and made your way towards the back and up a floor or two
you would have looked down upon The World is Flat - a stark
and astonishing sight.
Barker's huge new piece was a map of the world constructed from
3 000 army uniforms and 2 000 green beer bottles. At the southernmost
tip of Africa was a neon sign reading VOC - the logo of the Dutch
East India Company (DEIC).
It was the DEIC's commercial fleets - heroes of the apartheid history
books - that instigated South Africa's earliest colonial land wars and
forged a trail for the Boers to eventually settle in the interior and claim
a republic. In 1652 the Cape colony was established by the DEIC when
the trading company set up a refreshment station under Jan van Riebeek
- to stave off scurvy on the voyage north. Soon enough the indigenous
Khoikhoi people were enslaved, beginning a campaign of resistance in
1659. The station would become a British settlement and a military base
would be established at its heart, today known as The Castle of Good
Hope.
It was at The Castle in 1995 that The World is Flat began its life as
Is the World Flat? - on a show called “Scurvy” organised by Barker,
Kevin Brand and Brett Murray - in which they recolonised the military
museum and claimed it for
contemporary culture.
For Barker it was a milestone
and a political victory. Particularly
considering that in order to construct his work
- in the very first room ever built at the Castle
- he would have to request materials from
the army. In 1995 the Defence Force was
trying desperately to incorporate the former
resistance armies into its ranks. "I had to
negotiate with them," says Barker. "I told them
it's all about forgiveness."
Today Barker says that “Scurvy” was the
first time that he began to think globally about
his work. That he was looking at identity.
What were his own colonial origins? Was the
VOC logo - the first multi-national logo in the
world - a bit like the Coca Cola logo today?
In a press release for “Scurvy” he added:
"Is this how we see the world through the
media? Through a flat plain of images?"