Standard Bank Young Artist Wim Botha
by Kresta Tyler Johnson
Unquestionably this year will witness a transformation in the stature of the artist Wim Botha. Being awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award will solidify his position and elevate him from emerging to established.
A list of winners from the previous two decades read like a who's who of SA art, from William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa and Jane Alexander, to Trevor Makhoba, Pippa Skotnes, Lien Botha and most recently Berni Searle and Kathryn Smith.
Rarely is there the opportunity for a South African to create work that is not a specific, predetermined piece entered in a competition, but something completely new, which they wish to make. Standard Bank offers this chance by recognising an artist for their existing body of work. While the artist must realise an exhibition for Grahamstown, they are allowed free reign as to what they create.
Botha doesn't normally enter competitions as he is 'not keen and the winner turns out to be the judges'compromise'. However, Botha views Standard Bank as different since 'the award comes afterwards' and an artist is acknowledged for who they are as a creator.
Interviewing Botha was both challenging and precarious. I had determined it was a poignant moment to begin talking with the artist who will be receiving a lot of media attention over the next year. He not only has the arduous task of creating the exhibition for Grahamstown, but another show coming up in March at Michael Stevenson Contemporary.
Attempting to delve into the Botha's world is not an easy task. Any bit of research on the artist will reveal an intellectual thinker who makes precise movements when he creates his work after significant amounts of time considering the process and the implications that his pieces may have. He does intensive research and there is always an historical development and consideration of what may ultimately appear spontaneous.
Not wishing to compromise future articles and reviews, I thought it was appropriate to attempt a general overview of Botha's current oeuvre and see if I might be able to figure out where he is going.
I quickly realised as I began to bring up some of his pieces, particularly those seen at the recent 'Personal Affects', that Botha relishes the reactions of viewers to his works. Suddenly I found myself on the spot as he was silent, listening to my postulating about my impressions of his work.
Self-consciously I reflected on the work of other writers and interviewers. The artist has an uncanny ability to allow the interviewer or writer to direct the conversation and all too often I have found them attempting too hard to explicate, justify or comprehend the materials or images used in particular instances, while Botha calmly agrees when he feels so inclined or otherwise quietly observes.
There is an inherent personal nature to all of Botha's work but he is skeptical to explain it and will often build on what an interviewer says without offering anything new.
Botha commented that 'there is no one explanation (for any particular piece). Viewer participation is integral. I don't have a statement, the viewer is very important, (and this emanates from my) subconscious.' This can be deceiving though as the inquisitive nature of Botha to the reactions of viewers should never be taken as an attempt to assuage but if anything it is exactly the opposite, the desire to incite.
When a viewer looks at and considers a work, for example mieliepap pietá part of the importance is what they walk away with. Does the physical structure create a religious reference but re-appropriated; or does the particular medium speak to them about cultural heritage; or do they concern themselves with deciphering why an iconic religious figure has been re-created by a contemporary South African artist?
Botha intends all of the above and more. Works are meant to be 'open-ended, ambiguity is built into the works (and this) precludes specific readings. It is intentionally vague and subliminal'. His work, he acknowledges, 'can be offensive'.
'Things require a personal involvement. On some sense (there is a need) to involve or engage the viewer and through that engagement I get a better understanding of people.' A 'subconscious, cultural archetype' is revealed in his work as 'everything toys with ideas on several levels, conceptual, the medium, the figurative and the literal.'
Bolstered that my comments may hold some importance, I wanted to find out why the cynical and humorous side of his work does not seem to be investigated. Botha was unsure as well. Rarely do I find adequate discussion dealing with the blend of simplicity and danger, which intertwines in his art.
When I consider his preoccupation with western art historical imagery, and the way he takes traditional icons such as heraldic symbols, removes the specifics but attempts to make them seem digestible, I can not help but laugh or cringe.
The hyena reveals itself constantly in Botha's work, often replacing the stereotypical lion in heraldic reconfigurations. This is not something to lightly overlook. These animals are scavengers, violent and primitive. Botha is forcing a re-examination of emblematic imagery that used to mark the social status of families but now serves to relegate them to a primordial realm equitable with all species on earth.
Earlier works such as Carbon Copy showing a black Madonna are fraught with issues. Botha is reworking the historical narrative of missionaries who encountered the natives of Africa and believed if their earth goddess was black, making the Christian image of the Madonna black would make conversion easier.
This is precisely what Botha describes as a 'manipulation of images for much much more devious and profound purposes'. What those purposes are is left to the viewer to determine.
Botha's painstakingly created room installations, such as Mnemonic Reconstruction and Commune: Onomatopoeia are testaments to his 'fake, found objects, (which are) made to seem discovered' and simulate a recreation of something that previously existed but in reality is entirely new.
There is a consistent beautification of the mundane in Botha's work, but that beauty may be simply a disguise for the ugliness underneath. The alteration of traditional, preconceived notions and imagery is unsettling and there is perpetually a personal and universal nature at odds.
When I asked Botha what his favourite work was, he replied that his 'favourite is always the next one'. That led to me trying to gain some idea of where he may be going for the exhibition in Grahamstown. Instead he hinted about some of the small bronze images he was creating for his show in Cape Town building upon heraldry and mythological beings. This was only enough to intrigue and not fully reveal how the space of the gallery would become transformed.
Trying to process the information I gathered, I can't help but wonder if he isn't the one toying with all of us. Nothing created is ever unintentional and yet half his process is the very reactions and input of his viewers. I couldn't help but feel then that we then become his specimens, another part of his creations, integral on some levels, disposable on others. I certainly will never approach another work by Botha without a heightened sense of how his world intrudes into mine and in turn what he takes from me.
