Bodies, Buildings, and Borders: Navigating the Divided Nation through Contemporary South African and Palestinian Art Practice

This paper navigates the phenomenon of the divided nation through the work of contemporary South African artists Thando Mama, Sikhumbuzo Makandula, and Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi. I position the work of these artists practicing in a post-apartheid nation-state alongside the work of contemporary Palestinian artists Larissa Sansour and Khaled Jarrar, who respond to the ongoing struggle of the stateless Palestinian nation divided by colonialism and Israeli apartheid. Each of these artists critiques the construction of the modern nation-state using symbols such as the national flag, the national anthem, the passport and postage stamp, and physical walls and buildings. Underpinning this inquiry is the desire to imagine the parameters of a nation-state premised on the ideal of sharing space and time in the future: How can one alter existing national frameworks to create the conditions for coexistence and tolerance? What are the lessons we have learnt from past failure, and what would a desirable yet realistic future nation-state look like? Human beings are capable of learning from past mistakes and improving on old structures, methods, or systems in the future. Understanding the parts of a framework that have negative repercussions in one place can allow for an alteration of that framework to suit a different context with similar problems or histories. One of the defining characteristics of nationalism is that it generates racist ideology. According to Steven Grosby (2005: 5) nationalism regularly “injects hatred of what is perceived to be foreign, whether another nation, an immigrant, or a person who may practice another religion or speak a different language.” This aspect of nationalism is at the center of discussions around nations and nation-states in the twenty-first century.

In 2001, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) was held in Durban, South African. The conference positioned the Palestinian struggle at the center of the “global movement against racism, neo-liberalism, and empire” (Clarno 2015: 9). In a collection of essays written by academics from Africa and the diaspora titled Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy, Andy Clarno (2015: 9) confirms that since the WCAR conference, “activists and scholars have increasingly turned to South Africa to make sense of current conditions in Israel/Palestine.” There are certainly elements of contemporary Palestinian history that mirror South Africa’s recent history and thus lessons to be learned and strategies to be adopted. This said, if a comparison between these two national histories is to be genuinely useful, it is important to consider the “limitations of liberation” in post-apartheid South Africa (Clarno 2015: 9). These limitations are not unique to the South African context. Nationalism has played a significant role in liberating different countries in Africa from European colonization in the twentieth century. South Africa is the last country to officially join the continent as an independent nation (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012). The kind of nationalism that developed in countries such as Nigeria¹ or Ghana, for example, united many people from different ethnic, cultural, or religious groups in a joint effort to overthrow colonial administration. From this perspective, nationalism has played a positive role in liberating the African continent from colonization. In the present postcolonial era, this same form of nationalism has revealed its faults and limitations (Clarno 2015: 9). One of the limitations of nationalism in South Africa (and arguably worldwide) is in the treatment and construction of its real and imaginary borders that signal ideological and physical closure. Instead of welcoming continental neighbors, South Africa has adopted some of the national logic passed down from the colonial and apartheid administration and African nationals are treated as aliens.² The divisive and discriminatory logic of colonization and apartheid has continued to impact all levels of South African society, and the economic disempowerment of black South Africans has not improved under new political leadership. The artworks analyzed in this paper address different visual aspects of the nation-state in South Africa and Israel/Palestine. Through my analysis I tease out the use of national symbolism in these artists’ works as a way to unpack the current manifestations of nationalism in...