Community ZA
05.08 - 19.08.2022

The POWER Exhibition, which opened on 5 August at Community ZA runs until the 19th of August. The visual showpiece is the culmination of a three-day programme of talks funded by the Goethe Institut, overseen by the African Centre for Cities, and organised by the Contemporary Archive Project.

The point of the programme was to talk about power in the Durban cultural economy. Over three days from the 3rd to the 5th of August select attendees gathered at venues around the city to provoke, re-imagine, and reflect on the city’s power dynamics.

Art catalysed discussion: photographs made by Durban University of Technology students were used to trigger reflections, and dancers and musicians not only performed but submitted their views on the programme’s subject matter.

Themes emerged from these debates, which the curators of the exhibition – Ashleigh Danielle Ruiters, Mary-Anne McAllister and Niamh Walsh-Vorster – hope are embodied by their selection. According to the exhibition statement, “Images range from those that provoke violence by overtly challenging power, to cityscapes and portraits that re-imagine the self.”

The target audience includes the jaded and the expectant, the aloof and the inspired, as well as the humble art voyeur. All are invited to continue the necessary discussions around power in the arts sector at provincial and city levels. 

Thobani K’s photographic print, Killing Your Own Baby, is the most confrontational piece on show, falling in the category of images “that provoke violence by overtly challenging power.” It depicts a ski-masked captor in an ANC jacket wielding a panga in his right hand and a kitchen knife in his left. Kneeling in front of him, execution-style, is a figure whose head is hooded by the South African flag. The assailant’s knife hovers menacingly at the captive’s neck, whose white garments conjure the river of blood yet to be released. A stuffed animal kneels obediently under the hostage’s left hand, connoting innocence or closeness to the land.

The intention of this image is that it “challenges overt state violence and abuse of power aided by people and victims that stand by silently watching it manifest.” The work is inspired by the Marikana Massacre of 2012, but hosts readings of the power relation between the ruling party and the general public that are insidious as well as overt. Out tumble analogues of state capture, the sacrifice of the beloved country and Nelson Mandela rolling in his grave. Thobani K’s image is a visceral metaphor for many an assessment of the ANC’s custodianship of this democracy.

Installation view: Selloane Moeti, Skhuthazo and Love Humiliated Me (left); Sinazo Gamedala, Ntombikayise,(right). Courtesy of Power Talks and Contemporary Archive Project. Photograph by Paulo Menezes.

Grander narratives of power as it relates to black women’s bodies are picked up by Selloane Moeti and Sinazo Gamedala’s works. The latter’s terra cotta sculpture Ntombikayise symbolises African women’s refusal to conform to Eurocentric standards of beauty. Unadorned and sutured, the bust is not without a history of violent fragmentation. Gamedala’s work pairs well with Moeti’s in that both artists make liberal use of clay. The oil paintings Skhuthazo and Love Humiliated Me feature a clay orb where one would perhaps expect to see a head. I translate Skhuthazo to mean “impetus,” which is defined as “the force or energy with which a body moves.” Given that the vulva of the contorted figure is presented so prominently near the top of the frame, I would put forth that it is the site of impetus.

Reclamation of personal power can occur by using the body as a site of contestation, or it can happen by recentering one’s narrative history, as Mzwandile Thabiso Page Hadebe does in Ubumina Bami. The title translates to “It’s who I am,” with reference to the chicken in the oversized suit walking through reeds in the dark. Hadebe’s late father reared chickens for a living, so the figure in the ill-fitting suit could be a stand-in, wandering through a deathscape in the hereafter. Hadebe’s chosen title exhibits pride in the family business, which could only have come after some personal reflection by the artist. 

Alka Dass. Courtesy of Power Talks and Contemporary Archive Project. Photograph by Paulo Menezes.

Other exhibiting artists include Alka Dass, whose “art draws from her cultural narratives with the aim of addressing unprocessed emotions, the deep nesting of trauma, and feelings of repression as old as time.” The curatorial statement describes Meg Moore’s murals as bold “stories inspired by the communities, people and spaces around her. Her work focuses on cityscapes and nature.” 

In line with the practice of reflection on who has power and who does not, the curators offer their awareness of whose work is not in the room. Why are foreign nationals, queer artists, and artists living with disabilities underrepresented not only in the POWER Exhibition, but across the gallery walls of the city and country? Perhaps curators such as themselves are best placed to illuminate the gatekeeping policies of their various institutions, instead of posing such a question as a token to political correctness. 

Installation view: Power Exhibition, 2022. Courtesy of Power Talks and Contemporary Archive Project. Photograph by Paulo Menezes.

On the walls of the Community ZA exhibition space where art does not hang, are provocations drawn from the POWER Talks Durban sessions. Visitors are encouraged to group their answers around questions such as, for whom do we make art? Who would be your +1 at the talks? And most importantly, who was not invited? One would hope that when the POWER Exhibition comes down on the 19th of August, the post-it notes that are not gags are gathered and forwarded to the organisers of the 2023 edition of POWER Talks in KZN.