Esther Mahlangu and Speelman Mahlangu at 34Long
by Amy Miller
Standing in a room hung with the familiar Ndebele canvases of Esther Mahlangu as the traffic weaves up Long Street to a midday symphony of taxi sirens, one is caught in a curious intersection between the pull of the past and the throb of the present. Mahlangu's work is similarly liminal; while her translation of the Ndebele aesthetic vocabulary from wall to canvas has brought her international fame since her inclusion in the 1989 exhibition 'Magiciens de la Terre' at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, South African critics struggle to locate her position between the traditional and the contemporary. This is despite a general international trend towards acknowledging 'traditional forms of expression- as contemporary artistic statements with equal rights, bearing witness of a specific vital creativity'. (1)
The taxonomy of the traditional (and, perhaps, the undermining notion of 'tourist art' (2)) by which contemporary critics disregard Mahlangu's work is one that needs more nuanced negotiation. The misperception pervades that Ndebele culture is something autonomous and ancient, linked to (problematic) notions of 'ritual' and 'tribe', when in fact 'much of the material culture commonly identified as "traditionally" Ndebele had a far shorter history than the word "traditional" implies' (3). In fact the colourful geometric wall paintings that are its characteristic exponent appeared for the first time in the 1940s, at a time in which the Ndebele people were experiencing the ravages of extreme dislocation and dispossession (4), initially through defeat and enslavement by the Boers (in the 19th century), and then under successive generations of white rule (culminating in the creation of the KwaNdebele bantustan during apartheid). Wall-painting emerged simultaneously as a visible assertion of identity, and a commercial imperative, as tourists began to flock to what inevitably became, in the 1950s, cultural villages (ironically, these villages were promoted by the National Party government as demonstrating the positive potentiality of ethnic separatism). By the 1960s, bright geometric wall-painting and beading had become truly synonymous with the Ndebele.
Mahlangu's oeuvre demonstrates the dynamic underpinning of Ndebele art, which has, over the years, assimilated, mediated and accommodated shifting realities and influences: from the stylised inclusion of new, urban motifs such as the lightbulb and aeroplane within the geometric framework, to the use of politically-orientated colours (such as the green, yellow and black of the ANC) and the development of figurative details (seen, for example, in the work in this exhibition entitled I am Esther and this is my home). By adapting Ndebele designs from domestic walls to those of the gallery, from edifice to canvas, the work also implicitly engages with an existing discourse of Western abstraction. As a point of comparison, it is interesting to note that indisputably 'contemporary' artists such as Damien Hirst are involved in projects which work in the opposite direction; clients commission him to paint existing wall installations straight onto their walls (5). In addition, master conceptualist Sol LeWitt was well known for painting directly (often with a team of workers) onto the walls of the exhibition space in a system of geometric representation reduced to basic shapes and lines (6).
Despite the notable achievements of her career, Mahlangu's 2007 works currently on show at 34Long seem somehow to have erased this nuanced history, as well as the difficult present faced by many of the amaNdebele today. When seen in light of David Goldblatt's photographic essay 'The Transported of KwaNdebele' (1989), in which he documents the long and arduous daily journeys of Ndebele workers from 'independent' homeland to city (circumstances that have not, for many, changed much at all since 1994), Mahlangu's utopian view of Ndebele life rings somewhat false. Her work appears, instead, an endless variation on an (outmoded) theme, catering to a foreign gaze rather than a local reality; a selective memory rather than a comprehensive one.
The curatorial strategy underlying the exhibition is one that clearly facilitates consumption. The framing is professional and precise, Mahlangu's signature boldly articulated. While the geometric arrangement in which canvases of particular size and shape echo one another across the walls creates a symmetry that is true to the nature of the work itself, the uniformity and regularity of its display also produces an ease of seeing. No dialogues are opened up, no questions posed: Mahlangu's works are exhibited - and executed - as if strangely hermetically sealed. The only intriguing engagement she makes is with the use of organic pigments, often juxtaposed with industrial acrylics, which add an additional texture to the canvas and, perhaps, a layer of meaning to the tension between the traditional and the contemporary surrounding her work.
The juxtaposition of sculptures by her late nephew, Speelman Mahlangu, with her own work seems almost an afterthought: no clear link (besides the moniker) exists between his modelled figures, executed in a familiar African modernist mode (redolent, if not derivative, of Cecil Skotnes and Sidney Khumalo), and her self-consciously abstract, two-dimensional paintings. Furthermore, when looking at Mahlangu's work, which lines the walls of the room, one's back is almost constantly to Speelman's sculptures, making it difficult to make sense of the relationship between them.
While Mahlangu's repertoire continues to be visually compelling (a fact that should not be lost under a growing patina of critical aspersion), the exhibition itself leaves one feeling little challenged, little changed. Her recent pieces seems to have slipped into a repetitive, almost sentimental mode that idealises and essentialises Ndebele culture in an ahistorical moment (stylised figures in beaded garments and bangles cooking over the fire, for example), ignoring the complexity (and potential) of its complex present. Nevertheless, Mahlangu's work as a whole is an important touchstone for confronting critical assumptions about the 'traditional' and the 'contemporary', setting in motion necessary debates about our own processes of reception and perception.
Endnotes:
(1) Golinski, Hans and Hiekisch-Picard, Sepp. 'South Africa in Bochum'. New Identities. Hatje Cantz, Germany,2004:10-11
(2) Kauffman, Kyle. Foreward in Esther Mahlangu 2003 exhibition catalogue. Vgallery cc: Cape Town, 2003.7
(3) Powell, Ivor. Ndebele: A People and their Art. Struik Publishers: Cape Town, 1995.8
(4) Klopper, Sandra. 'History'. Peter Magubane: AmaNdebele. Sunbird Publishing (Pty) Ltd: Singapore, 2005, 13
(5) Kauffman, Kyle. Foreward in Esther Mahlangu 2003 exhibition catalogue. Vgallery cc: Cape Town, 2003.7
(6) Kimmelman, Michael. 'Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism dies at 78'. The New York Times, April 9,2007
Opens: August 7
Closes: September 1
