Barbara Pollack on SA Art
The recent exhibition 'Circumcised, Circumscribed', at New York's Axis Gallery was reviewed by the well-known New York critic Barbara Pollack. With her permission, this slightly altered version appears below.
Don't let the ostensible subject of the exhibition- the ritual removal of the foreskin as practiced by some ethnic groups in South Africa- keep you away from this excellent exploration of the politics and puitfalls of postcolonial South African art and documentary photography. In the U.S., circumcision is routinely performed at birth and infrequently challenged as sexual cruelty. In South Africa, where certain groups still perform circumcision on adolescents as part of their initiation into manhood, the practice lies at the heart of the nation's struggle between traditionalism and modernity - a conflict all the more contentious in the era following apartheid.
Instead of merely going for shock value, this show brings together a group of works, many of which have set off cultural controversies within South Africa, Axis has transported the art as well as the debates, dexcribed here in various texts contained in binders (ask for them at the reception desk). On view, for example, is Steve Hilton-Barber's 1990 photo-essay on the North Sotho tribe, a series that provoked outcry (and death threats) by the black community over a white photo-journalist's "violation" of the privacy of these secret rituals. In contrast, Brent Stirton, another white photojournalist, skirted controversy through self-censorship, reaching an agreement with the Xhosa king, who allowed him to photograph that tribe's circumcision rituals as long as he did not explicitly present the penis in his documentation.
The fine artists in this show are not as discreet. Peet Pienaar, an Afrikaner, arranged for his own circumcision (the foreskin is on view in a jar), a work that resulted in his expulsion from a 2000 Cape Town exhibition on masculine identity. Thembinkosi Goniwe, a black artist who participated in the protest against Pienaar, is represented here by his Communication: XYZ, large-scale digital stills drenched in flamboyant color from a film of a performance based on Xhosa rituals. Less provocative, but far more moving, are Colbert Mashile's idiosyncratic watercolors, whose quasi-representational vocabulary evokes the late work of Philip Guston. In an exploration of his own adolescent experience of ritual circumcision, Mashile offers hope that art can heal old wounds, both personal and political.
