Interview with MTN New Contemporaries Award curator Melissa Mboweni and winner Dineo Bopape
by Cara Snyman
Dineo Bopape is this year's MTN New Contemporaries Award winner. She was chosen from curator Melissa Mboweni's shortlist, which included Daniel Halter, Michael MacGarry and Themba Shibase. ArtThrob speaks to Mboweni and Bopape about the award.
Cara Snyman: In the MTN New Contemporaries exhibition catalogue, you describe the exhibition as considering 'a few topical aspects of life on the continent', and there seems to be a focus on national and continental politics. Any thoughts on this?
Melissa Mboweni: It certainly was not something I set out to do. I was trying to avoid meta-narratives. But I realised that it was going in that direction, so I just let it go.
CS: Dineo, your work is quite dissimilar in this respect, it feels like a more interior landscape, sort of magical and playful. Is this a conscious choice?
Dineo Bopape: Yes. I've been trying to make work that transcends the political, and not let that be the only thing. I want to also start speaking about other things. It is so easy to so get locked into identity politics. It becomes too heavy to deal with all the time.
Having the luxury to dream and not speak about 'I am a black woman', is also something political. With my previous work I got annoyed with it only being read from the political angle, and the aesthetic sense not being as important. It is always both. I wanted to make a shift, so the aesthetic becomes more important than the narrative or grand narrative. I think, maybe it is a conscious move away from work that is overtly political. I am thinking here of the writer Sello Duiker's work - it is about the everyday, not saying Madiba or Zuma. For me, because it is more personal it engages you more, and you can get further into the person's story, than just speaking about leaders.
CS: 'Serious' South African art for many years dealt almost exclusively with the political situation - some would suggest that it was morally reprehensible to deal with anything else. You were born in 1981, must have been in primary school still in 1994? Do you feel that that sensibility has persisted, that you are expected to speak about national politics, or personal ones, about 'I am a black woman', as you put it?
DB: Yes. I think some artists will insert politics in order to validate the work...
MM: Yes of course! It is easier to be classified, to be Understood [in that context]. It is so easy to say, 'Dineo is black, she is female, this is her background. I understand'. But then to try to marry that to the type of work she creates makes it difficult to put it in within that classification.
There have been artists who have been classified as 'activist artists', or 'lesbian activist artists', or someone who speaks about 'politics' or 'apartheid'. And then it becomes a situation where that is all you can talk about. It stops the development of those artists. And then that becomes difficult to for the artist shrug off.
But on the other hand there is also a sort of enfant terrible sensibility, with people shouting and screaming about issues, and [the effect of] that does tend to wear off. For me that is how you see the longevity of an artist - when they can live past their own drama. And then the work starts to speak on a different level, it moves beyond the one-liner.
CS: I found it interesting that three of the four MTN New Contemporaries nominees came from the Durban University of Technology (DUT). Any thoughts on this?
MM: I think in general there seem to be a lot of artists coming out of Durban.
CS: Was there anyone in particular at the DIT that was influential for you?
DB: Virginia Mckenny was a gem. Andries Botha. Khwezi Gule and Jeremy Wafer, when they were there.
CS: Where to from here?
DB: I am about to start my Master's at Columbia University in New York.
Opens: July 10
Closes: August 13
University of Johannesburg Art Gallery
Kingsway Campus, Auckland
Tel: (011) 559 2099
Email: aedempsey@uj.ac.za
www.uj.ac.za/artscentre
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 3pm
