First, some background: for those of you who do not know me, I am the new Editor of ArtThrob. I have been a writer (off and on) at ArtThrob since 2016. I am proud to take over the reins from Tim Leibbrandt and Chad Rossouw who, for six years, have steadfastly upheld ArtThrob’s mission: to develop a robust culture of thinking and writing about South African art that is free and accessible; and to support writers who dedicate their intellectual output to enriching the discourse of South African art. In my first six months as Editor, I saw how much care, devotion – and, sometimes, distress – this endeavour requires. For this and more, they deserve our applause.
When I think about writing a letter that might wrap up this year, I think about the artworks that moved me. Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose’s photographs of beachgoers over the December holidays eThekwini, witness of the sea as it collapses personal, social, ancestral, and spiritual life. Jeanne Gaigher’s interiors which hum with a quiet intensity, as still as sorrow, as slow as grief. Simphiwe Ndzube’s witches who turned their noses up at me, taught me how to read the world askew. Zander Blom’s monochrome paintings which I poured over like Rorschach tests, studying them (because I was selling them) until I had them memorised. Bonolo Kavula’s carefully hand-threaded tapestries, delicate enough to reflect the light of life, the shadow of loss. These are the images that come to mind, with the caveat that I am partial to them. They are close to me because I got to see them with my own eyes.
I’ve made this mistake before: to think that art is about images. It is not just about images. It is also about economy. It is also about social life.
Because what really moved me this year was the return to the exhibition space. I did not expect this – how pleased I was to share a conversation, a cigarette, a glass of wine with fellow gallery goers, many of them strangers. I once begrudged the experience of going to an opening where I knew no one and no one knew me, where work about hurt and pain stood flat against the wall while the wealthy hovered about, eating canapés, sipping champagne. In 2021, after more than a year of scrolling through virtual presentations online, I could not wait to return to these parties. What I thought was a game was, in fact, a ritual, a communion around sacred objects, a hub of social life.
What was lost in the virtual gallery wasn’t just the quality of the image. It was the quality of the experience, the sensation of an emotional humming around you: part envy, part admiration, part sadness, part beauty. Opposing tides of assimilation and subversion, conflict and embrace. Various circles of exclusivity which interlace, at times, and repel at others. The artworks, in this context, are not passive but aloof, immune to our bizarre human dance around them. Steady, tranquil, the artworks make one feel, at first, foolish. Then, after a couple drinks, on the edge of something divine.
This is what I was reminded of in 2021: that art has a certain kind of magic to it. When one works in art for a long time, this magic tends to become mundane. The artwork is no longer something that moves. It is something that must be moved: measured, packaged, shipped, and sold. It becomes statistical; it accrues. (This, I suspect, explains our simultaneous fascination and anxiety with NFTs. No longer malleable, in need of care and conservation – and therefore, precious – they represent the logical conclusion of the artwork-as-commodity: the artwork as barcode.)
On Twitter, Lena Sulik (a gallerist at Everard Read) posted a picture of Mmakgabo Mapula Helen Sebidi’s Who Are We and Where Are We Going (2005–2008) with the caption, “In my job sometimes I forget to stop and actually look at the artwork I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by. I mean – this is one of the most iconic works in contemporary SA art history & it’s just sitting here chilling under some bubble-wrap.”1This work was exhibited in Oasis, Everard Read’s 25th Anniversary group show. Misha Krynauw (ArtThrob writer and editorial assistant at Stevenson) replied with a picture of Manhood (2016): “This one was hung at the wall by my desk for a good few weeks after a group show.”
There was a time in my life when I believed sincerely that the art institution was a hopeless place; the white cube was where art went to die. Here was proof that magic can smack even the most desensitised between the eyes. What a gift this work can be – what a way to spend a life.
If artworks are magic, and if art institutions can be a hub of social life, is there any way we might find life in a hopeless place? The wall of apologies in Zanele Muholi’s Nize Nani tells me that our attempts to reveal our hearts within a gallery space still come off as incongruous, at best – at worst, vain. Something like Thuli Gamedze and Abri de Swardt’s sleepover at the Javett says otherwise: to spend time in the gallery is to dream alongside the artworks, to open one’s heart to magic: what Thuli and Abri call unlikely feelings, queer desires, collective dreams.
Despite what the news might lead you to believe, more and more years are rolling out ahead of us. These years demand nothing, as time demands nothing, not even life. What we decide to do with our years might be crucial. For better or worse, sensible or insane, I’ll be spending my time in well-lit rooms, in the company of impartial images. And, I hope, some sympathetic strangers.
