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Portia Malatjie is currently completing a PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She holds an MA in History of Art and a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). Malatjie is Associate Lecturer of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, was lecturer in History of Art and Visual Cultures at Rhodes University (2012 – 2013) and has guest lectured at the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University. She has published in local and international peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, and has presented conference papers the National Women’s Scholar Association conference in Atlanta (2018, USA), University of Glasgow (2017, UK), Bayreuth University (2016, Germany) and College Art Association (2014 and 2017, New York and Chicago). Malatjie was Head Curator of Brundyn+ Gallery, Cape Town (2013 – 2015); Director of the AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2015); Public Programme Coordinator at Goldsmiths, London (2016 – 2017), and curator at Tiwani Contemporary, London (2017 – 2018). She is currently Adjunct Curator at Norval Foundation and has served as a board member of the Visual Arts Task Team (Department of Visual Cultures), VANSA and IZIKO National Art Gallery. Her current research looks at the intersections between black spiritualities, continental black ontologies, and the African moving image aesthetic. 25
The South African Pavilion THE STRONGER WE BECOME A CASE OF AN ART LANGUAGE THROUGH THE WORK OF SOUTH AFRICAN ARTIST MAWANDE KA ZENZILE by Same Mdluli Art as a language in the South African context is not only a complex idea but also one that is encumbered by the historical baggage of having a colonial past that made language itself implicit in the colonial and apartheid project.¹ It is therefore important to note how languages, particularly indigenous languages, have acted as a form of resistance against the indoctrination of colonialism and apartheid. Visual art as language remains an important part of expression that is not always necessarily textual. In this paper I discuss the work of South African artist Mawande ka Zenzile, which is a visual language of resistance against what he sees as entrenched ideas around “truth”. I argue that while this may be a broad subject matter to interrogate, the visual language that his work employs offers several approaches to posing more intricate and intimate questions around knowledge and knowledge production in the South African visual arts landscape. It is thus important to begin with a visual analysis of ka Zenzile’s work, as it provides a working methodology for grappling with the kinds of discrepancies that it seeks to challenge – discrepancies particular to pedagogies, hegemonies and epistemologies of art. For this analysis, I will refer to two African scholars whom I believe best articulate these challenges. The first is David Koloane who views art criticism and Black identity in South Africa as part of the ‘art discourse that is and has always been the prerogative of the privileged white community whose education system has been designed according to western standards’.² Koloane’s text is primarily drawn from his assertion that ‘artistic discourse on the whole is based on abstract thought process rather than visual symbols’.³ The second scholar is Ngūgī wa Thiongo whose notion of ‘decolonising the mind’ is articulated through what he refers to as ‘the language of African literature’.⁴ In both instances I discuss a selection of ka Zenzile’s painterly works as well as his installations, which deal with similar issues or concerns. I employ these two perspectives as means of locating and/or positioning ka Zenzile’s oeuvre within a larger framework of visual art as a language that captures the nuances of art as a spiritual practice. In lieu of this, I also refer to other artists such as Dumile Feni, Ezrom Legae and Cyprian Shilakoe as examples of the preoccupation with art though a particular lexicon of art as a visual language. In Art Criticism for whom? Koloane presents two main ideas to consider when discussing and writing about art in South Africa. The first argument he presents is around the effects of the apartheid state in so far as it denied Black people the basic human right of choosing the type of education they preferred.⁵ Koloane’s views are informed by his lived experience of being subjected to a system where the government did not only enforce a substandard education for Black people but also made this part of a concerted effort of turning Black people into cheap labour to serve the white minority. This is important to note as it delineates the structural imbalances of how education was used as a tool to not only control a particular group of people but also dangerously associated with the institutional indoctrination of what constitutes art and defines an artist. The distinction between the self-taught artist versus a formally trained one is indeed contentious in the South African and African context given the kind of limitations Black people have been presented with and the level of accreditation afforded to formal education. Koloane, like many of his predecessors such as John Koenakeefe Mohl (1988) and Sydney Kumalo (1988), Durant Sihlali (1988), has consistently upheld strong views around the methodologies of teaching art and as such the epistemologies of learning in the art centres spread throughout South Africa, which are yet to be explored by arts scholars and researchers in the visual art space⁶. At the core of their insistence was challenging the notion that Black artists were to be taught in a “non-invasive” manner that enable their sense of “African-ness” to resonate in their creative practice. This meant certain mediums such as sculpture in the form of bronze casting for example as opposed to ‘wood-carving’ were less encouraged as the modes of expression appropriate and accessible for Black artists. The individual quest by these artists in articulating artistic language despite the prescriptive modes of making art during an oppressive state and defying this through their artistic practices, is testament to the trajectory of artists who have been grappling with the question of artistic language in South Africa in numerous ways. 1 The June 16 Student Uprising stand as a testament of a significant moment when language was at the center of a symbolic resistance of against domination and indoctrination. Language was also a key segregationist tool that demarcated the divisions between the ‘Bantustans’ which was also reinforced through the local radio stations broadcast in specific languages, many of these still exist although rebranded to keep up with current affairs and trends. v Bantustans were ‘homelands’ created by the apartheid government. 2 Koloane, Art Criticism for whom?, 69 3 Koloane, 71 4 wa Thiongo, Decolonising the Mind: The politics of language in African Literature, 4 5 Koloane, Art Criticism for whom?, 69. 6 Areas such as theatre and literature for example have develop a substantial amount of scholarly engagement with the kinds of expressive modes that emerged and informed the art centers most of which were located in the townships. 26
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