Raiding the Archive: Hentie van der Merwe (review)

RAIDING THE ARCHIVE: HENTIE VAN DER MERWE THE GENERATOR ART SPACE JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA CoLoniaL photography is overwheLmingLy contrived to re-write "other" cuLtures within a paradigm of the 'seLf. Practices such as anthropometry, driven by a beLief that bodies mapped were bodies 'known', made extensive use of photography to trace the physicaL and cuLturaL spaces and identities of 'otherness'. Anthropometry's use of photography as a tooL of accurate record not onLy mythoLogized the medium's positivism, but aLso occasioned photographic innovations such as John Lamprey's grid-background, deveLoped in the Late 1860s as a means of more accurateLy comparing raciaL body morphoLogies. It is this anthropometric tradition which Namibian-born artist, Hentie van der Merwe, confronts with a certain irony in his exhibition at the Generator Art Space in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing on a coLLection of commissioned photographs, taken by Hugh McFarLane, of naked white men recruited for the war effort in .1943, each shot against a Lamprey-Like background , the exhibition is constructed as a meditation upon the anthropometric grid as a mechanism that not onLy maps sociaL spaces and identities, but also controls the parameters of deviancy, normaLity and supremacy. As the -measure of distance from a 'ruLe', the grid's impLied, regimenting vioLence becomes the iconographic measure of the exhibition itseLf. But Van der Merwe's focus is not so much the brutaLity of coLoniaL vision, as a specific instance in which anthropometry has been turned back on to the 'seLf that is normally hidden behind the camera. He expLoits the dis-ease of this representationaL shift in order to scrutinise the mascuLinity that drives a notion of 'whiteness' in South Africa. The exhibition, conceptuaLLy, begins on the upper LeveL of the gaLLery, in a 'darkroom diorama', where three waLls of a black room are wallpapered with Hugh McFarlane's front, back and side views of the naked recruits. A gLass screen prevents physicaL entry into the room, transforming viewing from the possibiLity of intimate, scopic scrutiny to an obLigatory, voyeuristic surveiLLance of the physicaL morphoLogies of warriors of war. To read this 'diorama darkroom ' as just another coLoniaL victimoLogy doesn't do justice to the instaLLation's ironic take on the traditionaL racism of the representationaL act in so many coLoniaL images. Van der Merwe's dispLay of McFarLane's photographs isn't driven by the classificatory racism or the pornographic intent of so many coLoniaL photographs. Instead, the diorama upsets the unquestioned place of white men in the West who aLways photograph the rest, undressing the maLe gaze in a repetitive display of nakedness. The scrutiny continues outside the 'darkroom diorama', where the enLarged faces of McFarlane's subjects, encased in glass-fronted boxes marked with seriaL numbers, become specimens of microscopic anaLysis. These body parts, decapitated by photographic cropping, are disLocated in space, differentiated onLy by morphoLogy and numericaL taxonomy . Hard florescent Lighting strips the men of any 'shadow' behind which to hide. This aesthetic of austere, clinicaL formaLism not onLy underpins the 'scientism' of these visuaL procedures , but also highLights the Latent vioLence impLicit in these kinds of representation. On the Lower LeveL of the gaLLery, Larger-than-Life maLe siLhouettes are painted in bLack against a waLL, each again with seriaL numbers. The bodies are suspended in space, free of grids but fixed Like practice targets. The siLhouettes underscore the postures of the men as they stand naked before McFarlane's camera - sometimes upright, outstretched and defiant, sometimes sLouched, closed and vuLnerabLe, aLways physicaLLy differentiated. Here, nakedness is impLied but not reveaLed. One of the strengths of Van der Merwe's dispLay is the extent to which his expLoration of maLe physicaL identity is not driven by oversubscribed references to genitaLia, but through the objectified, vuLnerabLe, scrutinized physicaL form of the maLe body. Glass-fronted boxes on each of the stomachs of the siLhouettes contain softLy-Lit photographic snapshots - arbitrary, fleeting moments from the Namibian Picture Library. These flashes tentativeLy Locate the artist in a nation's coLLective consciousness, in a personaL narrative of identity that runs over his dispassionate scrutiny of the mascuLinity of 'whiteness'. But whiLe Van der Merwe's exhibition attempts to be a nostaLgic...