Curators in South Africa

Even though the making of exhibitions has been taking place in South Africa and the world since way back curatorship as we know it today and as a field of study  has only  been making its way in South Africa in the recent years. However the challenges there seems to be curators on the rise who do amazing work. Found this article in the Mail&Guardian on 6 curators working in South Africa.  Here is a few quotes that struck me as interesting reflections on images, curatorship also reflecting specifically in a Southern African context.

Perhaps because of the digital age in which we live, people have become desensitised to an image unless it is “hypersensational”.  Thato Mogotsi

The curator's role, she says, "should be more about mediation, which some artists are resistant to, but also about facilitating access to work and getting a deep understanding of the works and artists who make them — and also trying to ­create an environment where other people can access that too". Anthea Buys

 "The curated thing is an utterance and there needs to be a response to that, which is what I have found is quite frustrating about curating here -- that there is very seldom a serious critical response in a public forum." Anthea Buys

"Dutch artists are struggling to articulate a space where art can be political, because the artist is free to have it not mean anything, whereas here I find the opposite," she said. She then positioned the question closer to home: "Can [Southern African] art be useless? Does it have the freedom to be that way?"  Clare Butcher

Antropologia Visuale: Experimental blog

For one of my subjects called Visual Anthropology we discussed concepts such as iconology and iconoclasm. Based on ideas of Bruno Latour, W.J.T Mitchell, Regis Debray it was quite a challenging and stimulating class. For the exam we could then develop arguments around these themes. I created a presentation on Tumblr, to explore the concept of iconoclasm within the contemporary art scened fot he 1980's to the end of the 1990's in South Africa. The Tumblr is supposed to be like a mini exhibition which summarised the main points and shows some artworks. Of course it is not all comprehensive, so probably miss a lot of things. 

 Another thing that I am not completely satisfied with is the actual design of the presentation, but I 've been trying to find the right theme that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, that gives an exhibition feel. I am still in the dark on editing the codes so that I can actually reset the column widths and for example change the way it squeezes the pictures, it is just so time consuming to try and read trough the codes.  See the actual blog here.

Allestimento - Star Museum

Once upon a star by me, Edith Poirier, Wei-Ning Yang and Carlo Spiga.

As part of our exam we had to for groups to create a display with the theme stars. We decided to make the project  part of an ongoing exploration of the neighbourhood of Affori, a historical farmer’s village which now forms part of the city of Milan.

Within the neighbourhood we wanted to make a series of activities with the involvement of artists, reactivating buildings with flags designed by artists and other projects. The navigation would be aided with maps which will be distributed at points such as the Villa Litta (Library).

The display for the exhibition is focused on the history of Cooperativa di Stella (Cooperative of the stars). The display is placed within the elevator of the building which creates a sense of travelling up in space, or through history.  

Curatorial project - NABA

The process of putting up an exhibition as class project. See the information here. I wrote the introduction.