Art from South Africa HangART-7 Edition 6

HangART-7 Edition 6: South Africa

"Turbulence - Art from South Africa"

Nine artists, three women and six men, have been invited to Salzburg by Roger van Wyk, the Cape Town curator of the exhibition, to show their sculptures, objects, installations and paintings in Hangar-7.

The artist Ledelle Moe’s fallen monumental heads remind the viewer of scenes from Baghdad or Sarajevo and of the ephemeral nature of many a system of power apparently built for eternity. Brett Murray’s sculptures, which feed on familiar media images, also allude to the sadness and bitter irony of global political conflict. Samson Mudzunga mutates the great Venda rain-drum into hybrid fish and aircraft, which he uses for his spiritually underpinned performances. His work, taboo-breaking in his homeland, revolves round the theme of death and rebirth.

Nicholas Hlobo’s installations, with their exploration of sexual identities, can likewise be understood as an act of rebirth: visions of changing sexual identity, liberated from stereotypes. The artists Sanell Aggenbach and Conrad Botes concern themselves with the South African past and investigate the meaning of Western cultures in South Africa. Botes’s extendable wall installations, inspired by pop culture and comics, provide a counter-statement to the conservative Calvinism with which he grew up. Aggenbach reconstructs old photographic portraits as oil paintings and thereby uses nostalgia as the catalyst for interpretations of the past. Johannes Phokela also works with the theme of reconstruction. In his paintings he manipulates works from the history of European art, changes the skin colour of the main figures, and questions the euro-centric point of view and European claims to cultural supremacy.

Joachim Schönfeldt’s sculptural group Roar is an attempt to create a possible iconography of a pan-African religion. His majestic sculpture of threeheaded lionesses caused a furore on the South Africa art market, by means of which he made the rating of artistic work the subject of debate. Lyndi Sales comes to grips with the Helderberg aircraft accident of 1987, which claimed the life of her father and is still a painful memory in South Africa. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, she assembles pices of paper and cloth, banknotes and playing cards. The artist thus transforms the dark subject into a triumphant and reconciling gesture.

Art from Africa, and from South Africa, has in recent years been gingerly being discovered and discussed by European museums and exhibition halls. Its comprehensive integration in the still euro-centric and America-focussed art discourse has slowly begun. With this exhibition, and through communication with the artists, we hope to make a lasting contribution to the visibility of this art.

Works are being shown by:

Sanell Aggenbach (*1975), Conrad Botes (*1969), Nicholas Hlobo (*1975), Ledelle Moe (*1971), Samson Mudzunga (*1938), Brett Murray (*1961), Johannes Phokela (*1966), Lyndi Sales (*1973), Joachim Schönfeldt (*1958).