Thursday, October 16, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Right of Admission - Let the show begin!!!
Right of Admission
(Johannesburg, October 2014)
In a series of performative actions the artists Farieda Nazier and Alberta Whittle will contest the visible and invisible boundaries in Johannesburg. Using the physicality of the body and its appearance as markers for access, this performance functions as an intervention intended to challenge the “accepted narrative, which insists on an economic and social hierarchy of aspiration.”
(ROOM Press release September 2014)
CLICK on the links below and our TUMBLR site to view documentation of the four part performative intervention.
Album by Alberta Whittle
Album by Alberta Whittle
Images Dean Hutton
Album by Farieda Nazier
Images Farieda Nazier and Alberta Whittle
PART 3: Sandton
Friday, 10 October 2014 @ 12:00
Album by Farieda Nazier
Images Farieda Nazier and Alberta Whittle
Images Farieda Nazier and Alberta Whittle
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Thursday, October 2, 2014
RIGHT of ADMISSION - Follow us!
Right of Admission
Opening Reception & Performance (part 1):
Friday, 3 October 2014 from 16h30
Performance (part 2):
Saturday, 4 October 2014 from 10h00 - 16h00
Performance (part 3)- Capet Series Episode # 5:
Friday, 10.10.2014, from 16h30
Performance & Closing Party (part 4):
Saturday, 11 October 2014 from 10h00 - 16h00
"Ariving at Sandton City, we will be attired in full glamour regalia to begin the intervention.
We will perform a series of “selfies” at key places within the shopping centres: in front of the statue of Nelson Mandela, posing in boutiques, consuming expensive coffees, trying clothing and accessories. These “selfies” will be posted on tumblr and twitter as we intervene into the signifiers of success and excess embedded within the idea of what Sandton City symbolises for South Africans."
Whittle and Nazier
STAY POSTED with
TUMBLR
TWITTER
Thursday, September 25, 2014
New Work - Right of Admission
Right of ADMISSION
4 - 11 October 2014
opening: 3 October, 16h30
Space #3,
70 Juta Street, Braamfontein
70 Juta Street, Braamfontein
Friday, September 12, 2014
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Commemorating 20 Years of Democracy: A different dialogue
I will be presenting a paper entitled
Between four sprung springs, a crime scene, red-mugabe and a horde of four fives:
A critical retrospective of the Tension Torsion: 20 Years On exhibition
at the Msunduzi Museum conference which will be hosted by
Msunduzi Museum in Pietermaritzburg. Below, find an open invitation to attend.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
The Arts of Human Rights at WISER
You are invited to attend The Arts of Human Rights workshop hosted by WISER, where I will be presenting a paper entitled:
Beyond the After Math: (Re)negotiating race, memory and consequence - alongside a number of incredible colleagues who hail from a range of disciplines.
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Friday, July 11, 2014
Emerging Arts Activist presents- Futurespectives: 10 years from Now exhibition
This year's jam packed 3.5 day program, launched on Monday 7 July, resulted in eleven amazing handcrafted collage posters by our talented aspiring activists who hail from New Nations School (Fietas), Ennerdale Secondary School (Ennerdale) and Phefeni Secondary School (Soweto). Each poster explored the personal perspectives of the activists, and sought to position their life experiences in post-apartheid discourse by exploring themes of race, place and class and how these persist in the present. Some of the areas explored included the growing potential for future race-based conflict, educational transformation, rising crime rates and unemployment, and over-population in our cities.
Futurespectives: 10 years from Now exhibition
Join us at the APARTHEID MUSEUM on 17 July at 18.30,
to celebrate the creative insights of our youth and to commemorate the youth of the past who fought for South Africa's freedom.
The project would like to thank the
for their generous sponsorship and ongoing support.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
New Work: In place of Space
In Place of Space, was a site specific work, exhibited at the Apartheid Archive Conference 2014 entitled Race, Place, Location, Dislocation: Then and Now. The conference was hosted by the University of Pretoria from 21 May to 23 May.
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The apartheid legacy of forced removals and displacement has had long standing effects on the individual and social morale of South Africans. Besides for the perpetuated economic and political injustice, there remain psychological consequences related to the loss of financial, emotional, historical and cultural capital. The Group Areas Act of 1950, was the beginning of a number of segregation acts intended to control, divide and segregate South Africans along racial and ethnic lines. The implementation of these acts comprised a massive forced removal and demolition strategy which dislocated millions of non-whites as well as whites.
The exhibition entitled ‘In place of space’ is a show of fetishised utilitarian objects accumulated by evictees of the apartheid regime’s mass displacement project during the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. The theme explores the idea of home, loss and longing and the emotional trajectories of the disenfranchised within the apartheid and post-apartheid settings. The exhibition addresses this theme by visually representing ‘replacement’ or ‘transitional objects’, furniture, cutlery, implements etc. transferred from family homes in target areas to displaced dwellings in the townships or locations. The numerous losses encountered during forced relocations often render such objects, which become souvenirs of the space, precious or reliquary. ‘In place of space’ aims to elicit narrative interpretations in viewers that begin to explore the internal and physical tensions and struggles that may be encountered in the internalisation of displacement.
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| 'In place of Space' Antique table & Cement Site specific installation 20 May 2014 |
A special thanks to the Apartheid Archive Project organisers -
Prof. Norman Duncan, Prof. Garth Stevens, Marinda Maree, Hugo Canham- for an excellent platform.
Monday, May 5, 2014
"Beyond the ‘After Math’" article published in Critical Arts
Beyond the ‘After Math’: exploring psychological decolonisation in a post-apartheid context of artistic praxis
Farieda Nazier, 199-215
DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2014.906340
Abstract
This article argues that recontextualising applicable theories of Frantz Fanon through knowledge-seeking art practices can contribute to the ‘decolonisation of the mind’ in a contemporary South African context. The multimodal social intervention, entitled ‘After Math: An Exploration of Temporality, Wounding and Consequence’, hosted by the Apartheid Museum in August 2012 (principal artist and curator Farieda Nazier), is discussed and analysed. The exhibition and this retrospective article are grounded in Nazier's explorations and subsequent application of Fanonian theories and broader postcolonial postulations of place, gender and class. The intervention borrows from Fanon's theories and phenomenological approach to racial discrimination, using them as a point of departure to evoke memory and convey personal struggles within an apartheid and post-apartheid society through a number of visual and embodied modalities.
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Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Opening Remarks by Garth Stevens: Tension Torsion: 20 Years On
Opening Remarks
at the Tension Torsion: 20 Years On group art exhibition of new works
by
Farieda Nazier, Gordon Froud, Avitha Sooful and Oupa V. Mokwena -
curated by
Farieda Nazier,
Ithuba Art Gallery,
100 Juta Street,
Braamfontein,
Johannesburg,
South Africa.
Prof. Garth Stevens (Assistant Dean: Humanities Research)
Department of Psychology, School of Human & Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand
Thank you
Farieda, Gordon, Avitha and Oupa, for inviting me to make a few remarks at the
opening of your exhibition this evening.
I am here
this evening not as an artist, but as a social scientist whose work intersects
with much of what you see here tonight, and that work is located in an
initiative called the Apartheid Archive Project – a project that explores the
enduring effects of our racialised past on contemporary South Africa, but
through the lens of the everyday, the ordinary and the quotidian.
When I
saw the exhibition title, I immediately thought that this was such an apt
description of the complex and often contradictory effects of our past and the
ways in which we are trying to live with
and through this legacy in the
current period. This period is of course one that is marked by racialised
flashpoints in higher education, in communities in which the threat of
xenophobic or Afrophobic violence looms large, and in the everyday mutations of
racialised social interactions; by service delivery protests; by rolling
strikes in the mining sector across the Platinum Belt; by growing inequality
between the wealthiest and poorest sectors of South Africa; by violence that
has become endemic; by recalcitrant forms of gender discrimination; and by
reduced confidence in the structures of governance in South Africa. But to mention
only this would be Afro-pessimistic at least, and so we have to recognise the increased
access to basic services since 1994, genuine attempts at community integration,
changing subjectivities, and the emergence of a new layer of youth who are
relatively untainted by the explicit and overt institutional manifestations of
racism and racialisation.
This is
therefore a timely exhibition that contributes to us reflecting on the gains
and challenges facing South African society some 20 years after our transition
to an enfranchised, democratic dispensation, but it is also a time of reckoning
for the political leadership and for ordinary South Africans, the latter who
have perhaps too easily relinquished and ceded the rights of citizens in the
face of this new found freedom.
And so
the question that arises is: How do we
live with and through this legacy, or stated differently, how do we ‘do’ or
perform freedom today? The answer of course is simple: in complicated ways! There
are no doubt tensions and distortions associated with this past in South Africa
today, but there are also genuine attempts at rapprochement and refiguring
South African society, as illustrations of this complicatedness.
Over the
last 20 years, the discourse of reconciliation has perhaps become such a lofty
ideal that it has in many ways become a free-floating signifier that now encapsulates
so many meanings, interests and agendas, that it is hard to discern what we
actually mean by it, let alone how to attain it. Perhaps the idea of
entanglement as spoken about by writers such as Mbembe, Nuttall and Straker is
one way to think about this complicated present. Entanglement refers to the
complex ways in which our histories, our past and present, our subjectivities,
and indeed our lives, are so intertwined that that disentanglement leading to a
‘clean slate’ amongst South Africans is perhaps not possible, nor necessarily
desirable. As an entry point into the complicated nature of our present, maybe
an acknowledgement of these complex relationships, leading to an understanding
and mutual recognition, is perhaps a less lofty ideal to pursue, as it compels
us to not only live with this complexity, but also to recognise that this
complexity is not necessarily only a problem but also has a range of future
possibilities. It can indeed open up moments of dialogue, intercommunal spaces
of participation, alternative subjectivities, and also the possibilities of a
critically engaged citizenry, who if necessary, may act in insurgent ways to
hold those in power accountable.
Tension Torsion: 20 Years On offers
one such space for promoting and provoking dialogue. As a social scientist, and
not an artist, let me briefly add that in my humble view, art offers us a
different medium through which to articulate, contest and express experiences
in the world. It cuts across the intellectual, cultural, academic and public
realms in ways that can often not be accomplished through the traditional,
formal registers and formats associated with the academy today. The arts open
up spaces for a performative social science that can promote a truly
public-intellectual engagement, making it as important, if not more important
to the project of cultural revitalisation and renewal that is central to the
social transformation project.
So as you
enjoy each other’s company, but most importantly the installations that are
part of this exhibition tonight, I hope that you will be provoked into dialogue
about the continued impact of our past on our present, the complexities and
challenges of this present, but also the possibilities of a future that is yet
to be imagined and is yet to unfold.
Thank you
and congratulations to all of you.
Garth
Stevens, 20/03/2014
Please follow the links to view latest publications
Edited by Garth Stevens, Norman Duncan and Derek Hook
http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137263902
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Tension Torsion features
Click on the link below to view Business Day TV's feature on
Tension Torsion: 20 Years On.
CLICK HERE: Business Day TV Report
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
(P)review - Tension Torsion: 20 Years On
An alternative reading
Written by Alberta Whittle |
| 'Bite the Bullet' by Avitha Sooful, ready for installation. |
How do we understand democracy today?
What does democracy mean in South Africa?
What is the legacy of the past 20 years?
Reflecting on this celebration of 20 years of Democracy in South Africa, Gordon Froud, Oupa Vusimusi Mokwena, Farieda Nazier and Avitha Sooful question the role and the mechanics of the distribution of power. Their work focuses on the social and political sound-bites and legends, which surround this celebration of Democracy and the deification of Mandela. Instead of passively accepting the sanitised version of events, which proclaim democracy as a completed action, the artists resist this accepted narrative.
Their works heft unwieldy themes of power, authorship, resistance and race, whilst utilising an unexpected sense of play. Political art is a serious business and these artists are serious. But there is something reminiscent of the funfair about this show. Employing the warped sense of perspective and scale found in the Hall of Mirrors of a traditional funfair, the artworks reveal alternative interpretations of a shared past. The construction of memories reveals a process of recollection, nostalgia and commemoration. Froud, Mokwena, Nazier and Sooful straddle different generations of South Africans whose knowledge of Apartheid draws from personal and collective memories, as well as accepted historical narratives urging us to question, Has freedom been achieved?
Human Rights Month is commemorated in
March to remind South Africans about the sacrifices that accompanied the struggle
for the attainment of democracy in South Africa. Human Rights Day on 21st
March falls within this period. South Africa is regarded as a beacon of hope on
the continent and internationally in the promotion and protection of human
rights.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Tension Torsion: 20 Years On Exhibition
Tension Torsion: 20 Years on
A group show curated by
Farieda Nazier, with Gordon Froud, Avi Sooful and Oupa V Mokwena
20 March to 17 April 2014
100 Juta Street, Braamfontein
The exhibition is a platform for the art works of a demographically diverse group of artists; Farieda Nazier, Gordon Froud, Avitha Sooful and Oupa V.Mokwena. Their comprehensive body of work considers the paradoxical readings of contentious socio-political themes as it unfolds within the vexed context of lived experiences over the last 20 years.
Nazier’s work 'Nag vannie lang latte', is a satirical take on the ironies and tensions that exist within the uhuru-mythology Nag van die lang messe. 'Bite the Bullet' by Sooful, is a ceramic installation of 19 larger-than-life spent bullet cartridges and 5 new bullets, which reflects the contested and violent legacies of the country.
Froud’s untitled art work, critiques the notions of tension and torsion in the controversial works of contemporary South African artists. Mokwena in his work entitled 'Our Gnomes', deconstructs the African Tokolosh mythology by positioning it within the domain of South African politics.
The intervention further engages in topical dialogue that resonates with the idea of Paulo Freire and Steve Bantu Biko’s praxis through a public educational programme. The themes for the public programme address criticality amongst South African youth that will be addressed in the Angry Youth Workshop supported by UJ CERT; running on 11 and 12 April 2014.
The project as a whole aims to raise important questions about the nation’s post-apartheid trajectory; in order to evoke critical dialogue in audiences around the discrimination-wounding-consequence theme. A broader objective of the project’s praxis element is to instill critical consciousness in marginalized and disenfranchised social groupings, contributing towards physical and mental liberation or decolonization.
Nazier’s work 'Nag vannie lang latte', is a satirical take on the ironies and tensions that exist within the uhuru-mythology Nag van die lang messe. 'Bite the Bullet' by Sooful, is a ceramic installation of 19 larger-than-life spent bullet cartridges and 5 new bullets, which reflects the contested and violent legacies of the country.
Froud’s untitled art work, critiques the notions of tension and torsion in the controversial works of contemporary South African artists. Mokwena in his work entitled 'Our Gnomes', deconstructs the African Tokolosh mythology by positioning it within the domain of South African politics.
The intervention further engages in topical dialogue that resonates with the idea of Paulo Freire and Steve Bantu Biko’s praxis through a public educational programme. The themes for the public programme address criticality amongst South African youth that will be addressed in the Angry Youth Workshop supported by UJ CERT; running on 11 and 12 April 2014.
The project as a whole aims to raise important questions about the nation’s post-apartheid trajectory; in order to evoke critical dialogue in audiences around the discrimination-wounding-consequence theme. A broader objective of the project’s praxis element is to instill critical consciousness in marginalized and disenfranchised social groupings, contributing towards physical and mental liberation or decolonization.
Acknowledgements:
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