Archive: Issue No. 88, December 2004

'Voiceovers' is a visual riposte to every colonial artist and their modern-day counterpart who ever depicted an unpopulated African landscape awaiting the supposedly superior European hand of civilisation. This show is a celebration of artifacts that provides an eclectic hint at the rich cultural veins from which they were siphoned.

An ancient 19th century Ndebele bridal skirt of white beads is at the heart of this exhibition. It is a treasure from an historian's point of view, an artwork of consummate skill that occupies a focal point. It is no coincidence that a group of sangomas, invited to bless the exhibition at its opening, led a walkabout that ended in a dramatic epilogue of song and dance before this beaded garment.

The skirt is surrounded by an eclectic selection of pieces primarily from southern and western Africa that are all drawn from Wits University's esteemed Standard Bank Collection of African Art. The four curators - Julia Charlton, Fiona Rankin-Smith, Anitra Nettleton and Karel Nel - asked a variety of people connected to Wits to select a work along with a text explaining their choice.

The curatorial aim was in part to break down a very specialist field into a collection of artworks chosen for highly personal reasons by experts and non-experts alike. It was hoped that this individual interpretation would, in turn, stimulate debate and discussion about what exactly constitutes a 'treasure' and why.

It certainly helps to explode some myths and half-truths about Africa to which the Minister of Arts and Culture referred in his opening speech. Dr Pallo Jordan said: 'The portrayal of Africa as a continent somehow frozen in time, with no history to speak of, and the portrayal of people ... as childlike primitives or vicious savages is something we've had to live with for the past 300-odd years.'

The Minister said such myths and half-truths had been used to atrocious ends and inflicted damage on the psyche and body of a nation. However, they were slowly but surely being worn away during the latter half of the 20th century.

The explanatory texts are informative and in many cases contribute effectively to this cause. But unexpected and surprising connections between objects through their unusual juxtaposition speak more powerfully than text alone could achieve.

For instance, William Kentridge selects Asen. This circular stage of miniature metal figures standing on top of a pole was created in 20th century Benin. The actors and the scenery, sometimes represented symbolically, speak loudly to a similar diorama of wooden figures also standing on a round base in the adjacent room. The Altar of God, by Jackson Hlungwane, tells its own religious narrative - though on a much grander scale - with his figures of good and evil.

The Altar of God is also testament to the problematic aspects that recur in any Westernised display of African art. This altar was created in a highly specific context, standing in its original form atop a mountain in Venda where it performed a religious, cultural and social function.

Now, it appears somewhat diminished in a gallery where its display is double-edged: more people get to view it but totally alienated from its original function. Even the steel 'aerial to God' - a rod that projects upwards - is a reduced substitute for the original that stood much higher and was decorated with number plates and mirrors in an eccentric hotline to the almighty.

This dilemma is repeated in wonderful objects like the brightly-coloured and intimidating Nigerian Igbo costume with swollen belly that commands attention in a corner of the main gallery space. It was of course made with performance and ritual in mind and is supposed to be worn by a dancer on stilts. It is still a magnificent treasure, standing in the SANG, yet totally removed from its original purpose.

As Nettleton writes in her foreword to the show's catalogue, treating historical objects as treasures in vitrines utterly changes their meaning - 'They are frozen, fragments of a performance outside of which they would historically have had no value ... They are aestheticised through their presentation in vitrines or against neutral backdrops, so that their presence is both abstract and real but their valences have been reformulated.'

'Voice-overs' succeeds by wearing its problems visibly on its sleeve. Its curators accept the inherent issues of display and make a feature of them - in the first instance, by the totally personal selection process. In this way, the curators turn potential weakness to advantage. They foreground the issue of interpretation and thereby open up the attribution of meaning to a multivalent discourse.

Opens: November 20
Closes: February 6, 2005