Image and Imagination: Notes on Postmodernism

IMAGE AND IMAGINATION Notes on Postmodernism Dagm aw i W oubshet / believe in symbols; symbols bear power; symbols demand power. Elizabeth Alexander1 Lest we lose hope entirely, we must never cease to remind ourselves of the miracle of South Africa. Wole Soyinka2 U nremittingly, the world has cast its eyes on South Africa. For Americans, for example, the parallel histories of apartheid—the pernicious legacy of white supremacy, the politics and culture of resistance, democratic yearnings— lend themselves to pointed comparison; each nation could hold up the other and witness its own image refracted in myriad, arresting ways. And if the past thirteen years are any indication, the end of Apartheid has only heightened South Africa's significance, as the country, once in numbing isolation, pries open itself, beckoning new questions and possibilities. For Nigerian, Congolese, Ethiopian, and many other African nationals, post-Apartheid South Africa has become a viable continental alternative to Europe and North America to make new beginnings; the example of reconciliation that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has set is now being adopted in other countries also yearning for coexistence and the healing of traumatic wounds; and, a constitution that compels us to ask if indeed France and the United States remain the torchbearers of modern liberalism. These past thirteen years also compel us to weigh South African artistic preoccupations. We can glean from the various group shows that commemorated the country's ten-year anniversary, for example, the pressing issues and the range of artistic trends in contemporary South African visual arts. A Decade of Democracy: Witnessing South Africa, an exhibition at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston, stood out for its intimacy and ambition.3 Because the show marks a particular period, it induces us to anticipate a retrospective show, one that takes stock of the issues and trends that have been percolating since 1994. And, at the same time, because this period pivots upon the idea and ideals of democracy—"A Decade of Democracy," as the show title declares—we also wish to apprehend from it an impulse, a style, a mood that says something to us about the epochal shifts in the country. These demands are not lost on the curators , and they try to meet them by loosely organizing the show around four themes—"gender and sexuality," "urban realities," "race and identity," and "ceremony and spirituality"—which, by way of synecdoche, they expect to anchor the principles of democracy and express the particulars of life in postapartheid South Africa. The weight of these two demands, however, is apparent, and ironically the works in the show end up exposing this burden by openly defying curatorial constraint, as many of the works could easily belong to more than the single category they are meant to elaborate. For example, Pauline Maz1 3 0 * N k a Journal of Cont em porary African Art ibuko's lush, painterly collages express all the themes of the show, as do Roderick Sauls' brightcolored jackets lined in surreal imagery. The works themselves, it seems, in resisting curatorial purview, move away from explaining the past decade, away from the limiting bounds of a retrospective , to organically experiencing life in the new South Africa, where race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and urban realities interpenetrate one another, as they do in real life. Formally, too, we see a range in the modes of representation. Accouterments directly taken from the streets—from fruit and apparel vendors, makeshift barber stands, and other intimate paraphernalia —metonymically reconstruct South Africa's altered cityscapes in Alison Kearney's work, particularly her portrayals of the sidewalks of Hillbrow and downtown Johannesburg, which, contrary to tourist folklore, bustle with life and trade. Jeannot Ladeira also explores South Africa's new cosmopolitan cityscapes by focusing on the experience of the many African arrivants who are changing the demographics of a city like Joburg. He uses small, featherweight boxes wrapped in richly patterned textiles (in the manner of Yinka Shonibare)—textiles with a transnational history of their own—to foreground transience, displacement , and appropriation. Nicholas Hlobo is playful with desire, pleasure, and other affects that were previously sidelined. In two sensual pieces, Hlobo brings to...