Browsing by Author "Skotnes, Pippa"
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- ItemOpen AccessAncestral journeys : a personal reinterpretation of identity through the visual display of paper theatre cabinets and books(2000) Sales, Lyndi; Skotnes, Pippa
- ItemOpen AccessAnnotations of loss and abundance : an examination of the !kun children's material in the Bleek and Lloyd Collection (1879-1881)(2011) Winberg, Marlene; Skotnes, Pippa; Hamilton, CarolynThe Bleek and Lloyd Collection is an archive of interviews and stories, drawings, paintings and photographs of and xam and !kun individuals, collected by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd between 1870 and 1881 in Cape Town. My dissertation focuses on the !kun children's material in the archive, created by Lucy Lloyd and the four !kun boys, !nanni, Tamme uma and Da, who lived in her home in Cape Town between 1879 and 1881. Until very recently, their collection of 17 notebooks and more than 570 paintings and drawings had been largely ignored and remained a silent partner to the larger, xam, part of the collection. Indeed, in a major publication it was declared that nothing was known about the boys and stated that "there is no information on their families of origin, the conditions they had previously lived under, or the reasons why they ended up in custody" (Szalay 2002: 21). This study places the children centre stage and explores their stories from a number of perspectives. I set out to assess to what extent the four !kun children laid down an account of their personal and historical experiences, through their texts, paintings and drawings in the Bleek and Lloyd project to record Bushmen languages and literature. In order to do this, I have investigated the historical and socioeconomic conditions in the territory now known as Namibia during the period of their childhoods, as well as the circumstances under which the children were conveyed to Cape Town and eventually joined the Bleek- Lloyd household. I have looked at Lucy Lloyd's personal history and examined the ways in which she shaped the making of the collection in her home. I suggest that a consideration of the loss and trauma experienced by Lloyd may have predisposed her to recognition and engagement of, or at least, accommodation of, the trauma experienced by the !kun boys.
- ItemOpen AccessThe choreography of display : experiential exhibitions in the context of museum practice and theory(2003) Thorne, Jessica Louise; Skotnes, Pippa; Soudien, CrainIn this project I examine curatorial processes and the experience of constructing and viewing museum exhibitions. Specifically I have been interested in the way in which certain exhibits facilitate powerful emotional responses from their viewers. I suggest that the curators of these kinds of exhibitions employ strategies which not only choreograph the displays but the viewers' bodies themselves as they move through them. As a case study of an experiential exhibition I focus on the District Six Museum where I have been part of its curatorial team since 1999. The work of curatorship that I have done at the Museum during the period of my registration for this degree constitutes part of this submission.
- ItemOpen AccessChorus for chimeras: a series of etchings towards the development of a personal iconography incorporating symbols, mythologies and ritual(1988) Vorster, Alma; Skotnes, Pippa; Inggs, StephenAspects of mythologies, their associated rituals and shamanism, are the subjects of this thesis. In a portfolio of twenty-one etchings, I have modified and recontextualised images from a variety of sources as a means to developing a personal iconography. Ritual and the creation of mythologies offer humankind one way in which inexplicable aspects of experience can be confronted. Myths are expressed visually or verbally through the language of symbols. These symbols provide a means to transcend the physical world, and to create an environment in which knowledge and understanding of the cosmos is enriched. The rituals accompanying myths, and in particular the role played in these by the shaman, have been of major importance in the development of this body of work. The exploration of my field of study was principally based on visual reference material and recounts of myths. Source material was derived from rock paintings, ritualistic costumes, musical instruments and other objects found in the rites which accompany the narration of myths of n1ainly pre- . literate societies. In the section, SOURCES AND REFERENCES, such areas of interest are discussed. Rituals have been an important focal point of my examination of mythologies, as an abundance of symbolical connections to the metaphysical realm are included in them. These take the form of clothing and other adornments, such as headdresses and masks, and a variety of ritualistic objects and instruments. The meanings of mythologies are distilled, through the participation of the observers or listeners, by personally interpreting the symbols they perceive. Often symbols are obscure and in their understanding assistance is required. This aid is offered by those individuals who, in a given culture, specialize as interpreters - prophets, sages, priests and shamans. 1 The shaman, as mediator, has been a special concern in my research. I have concentrated on those societies where shamanism is the central religious practice. By virtue of their experience of ritualistic ecstasy, shamans are believed to transcend the physical barriers of time and space to become inhabitants in a metaphysical sphere and participants in the mythology. To enable entry, the ecstatic has to undergo a symbolical metamorphosis during the trance state. This metamorphosis entails a ritualistic suffering, death and resurrection as well as a ceremonial incarnation: an animal or spectral form appropriate to him or her or the occasion. My investigation into the transformation processes has focused mainly on visual references to the animal or mythical beings which aid the incarnation. As well as the gleaning of symbols and forms from mythologies, and their associated rituals, I have referred to a multitude of designs and shapes from the natural world, including palaeontological and biological sources. To formulate the information comprising my personal iconography, various interpretative and manipulative processes were employed. These took the form of drawings and collages. In the section, WORKING METHODS AND ETCHING PROCESSES, these will be discussed. This section is also concerned with the variety of etching techniques utilized in the body of practical work. In the section, INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINTS, I have mentioned some of the themes developed in the four series. I have not discussed the meanings of each print individually, as I hope that these will, in part, be determined by the viewers themselves, but have tried rather to provide an insight into some of the motives I have had in constructing my images. A selection of images from my sketchbooks as well as preparatory drawings relating to the final in1ages have been included. The INDEX TO THE PRINTS, details editions, techniques, sizes and titles of each print.
- ItemOpen AccessThe dissection: An examination of the printmaking tradition as a means to reconsider the relationship between the human body and its representation(1995) Langerman, Fritha; Payne, Malcolm; Skotnes, PippaMy work is informed by the identification of the body as a site of anxiety. Computer technologies have led to increased disembodiment, while AIDS has reinforced awareness of the body as physically vulnerable. The basic premise governing my dissertation is that the body of the individual has become a collection of parts - fragmented by its representation. More specifically, I have referred to medical illustration and its role in the objectification and abstraction of the body. In revisualising the image of the body I have chosen to work within a formally fragmented framework. My title, The Dissection, refers to an intrusion into the body, that has as its aim the extraction of knowledge: it is about revealing the unseen. It also relates directly to my working method, which isolates, cuts and sews images. My source materials are medical engravings derived from eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century medical atlases. As these references form part of the history and technology of printing, my project has been to recontextualise these images within the tradition of printmaking. This has resulted in technical innovations becoming a significant part of the work's content. The first part of this paper deals with the assertion that medical illustration constructs the body as an .object. I refer to Barthes in assessing the notion of authorship, and discuss alternative theories of the subjective construction of the body. Having established the body as object, I consider the influence of illustration on the perception of the body. I then examine the influence of illustration on theories of biological determinism, and identify the implications of these theoretical concerns for the body as art object. The second part of the paper situates my work within the context of printmaking. I draw parallels between the printed body and collage, and mention my use of format and the multiple in an interpretation of the body. The final section makes specific reference to my body of work.
- ItemOpen AccessDithugula tša Malefokana: paying libation in the photographic archive made by anthropologists E.J. & J.D. Krige in 1930s Bolobedu, under Queen Modjadji III(2012) Mahashe, George; Skotnes, Pippa; Hamilton, CarolynHow, and in what ways, might a visually - and artistically - inclined person gain knowledge from a body of ethnographic photographic objects? I approach this question by launching an inquiry into the Balobedu of Limpopo province, South Africa as masters of myth - making, the 1930s anthropologists as masters of perception and myth transmission, the camera as a mechanical tool that has no master and the photographic image and object as a slippery abstract, or thing, that resists taming. What binds Balobedu, anthropologists and photography in this relationship is their collaboration at particular points in time in the production of the knowledge that is now Khelobedu. Khelobedu refers to all knowledge, custom, practices and culture emanating from Bolobedu and its people. To do this, I assume, or play with, the character of ' motshwara marapo ' (keeper of the bones or master of ceremonies), a versed person who officiates in ceremonies involving multiple custodies, doing so by reciting stories and enacting activities that facilitate progress within ceremonies and rituals. My engagement explores the process of pacifying a disavowed ethnographic archive using the performative aspect of the photographic object's materiality with the aim of gaining knowledge of the indigenous and colonial, using concepts with origins in both categories
- ItemOpen AccessEthics of the dust: on the care of a university art collection(2015) Brown, Jessica Natasha; Skotnes, Pippa; Hamilton, CarolynThis thesis examines the University of Cape Town (UCT) Permanent Works of Art Collection in order to determine its relevance to, and status within, the university. The text traces the historical and current roles of the university art collection in general, before focusing specifically on the UCT art collection’s history, including the contexts, events and personalities which shaped its development, from its embryonic beginnings in 1911, to the present. In an era which demands clear correlations between the allocation of resources and relevance to institutional goals, the contemporary university collection is under pressure to demonstrate its potential as a useful educational and interpretive tool within the university (the so-called ‘triple mission’ of collections: teaching, research and public display), or risk being consigned to obsolescence, even destruction. Based on a survey of the UCT art collection’s holdings, interviews, and a combination of bibliographic and archival research, undertaken between 2011and 2014, the thesis establishes that, whereas most university collections were traditionally constituted for the purpose of teaching and research, or for the preservation and exhibition of historical artefacts pertaining to a university and/or a specific discipline, this collection does not precisely fulfill either function.
- ItemOpen AccessThe farm(2011) Scholtz-Hofmeyr, Renzske; Josephy, Svea; Skotnes, PippaDuring the late 1880s Gerhardus Robert Stewart and his wife Alida Johanna Maria Stewart, second generation settlers from the Great Trek, bought a 250-hectare farm 20 kilometres southwest of Pretoria. During the next 100 years the farm became a working farm, and supported a chalk quarry. The family grew and flourished and the land was passed down from generation to generation. ... This MFA project has been my attempt to represent this land and the meaning it holds and once held for my mother, her parents and grandparents. My strategy has been to act as curator, assembling 'the archive' the farm represents, and then finding a way of ordering the meaning that has flowed therefrom. In doing this I have had to, and wanted to, confront both an irrepressible attachment to an ancestral home and the ways in which land itself can appear changed, not by any physical alteration, but by the events that occur on it. In creating this project, I have attempted to resolve an irresolvable paradox – how to represent the past before the present.That this has proved, in this case in particular, to be impossible, has not rendered the attempt meaningless. Indeed, I believe and hope, it will raise in the viewer's mind the question of just how much we are able to see of what is before us that we do not already know, and how much the present can change the past.
- ItemOpen AccessA graphic interpretation of some social constructions of disability(1995) Clark-Brown, Peter Gabriel; Skotnes, PippaThe work undertaken for my Masters degree seeks to address some of the prejudice experienced by disabled people. Society's concept of a normal body prescribes unattainable standards for people with disabilities, thereby isolating and marginalising them. Instead of accommodating these physical differences, society encourages disabled people to withdraw from society or to try to conform to able-bodied ideals and to appear 'as normal as possible'. The very physical presence of disabled people challenges these assumptions of normality. Therefore, attempts are made to cosmetically hide the offending part or exclude the person from society (e.g. a hollow shirt sleeve or 'special' school). When individuals fail to conform to the prescribed standards of normality, they face the stigma of being viewed as pitifully inferior and dependent upon their able-bodied counterparts. In this way disabled people do not 'suffer' so much from their condition, as from the oppression of able-bodied biases. Through different eyes, society could be seen as handicapped as a result of its inability to adapt to, or deal with difference. In reality, however, disabilities are experienced by many people and can range from those which are physically visible and easily identified to those less obvious, but often more debilitating such as abrasive, socially aggressive personalities or learning disabilities. It is possible, therefore, to extend the understanding of the term disability to any physical or emotional impairment that limits a person's functioning within a so-called normal society. Although many people and organisations have searched for less pejorative or negative terms to describe an impairment such as 'Very Special', 'people with abilities' or 'physically challenged', these attempts have failed to reverse prejudice. Instead, these descriptions have only re-described the emphasis on 'otherness' and 'difference'. In addition, these replaced descriptions are again associated with the same stigmas that they were intentionally designed to avoid. In the following discussion I have consciously used the word disabled or disability to refer to individuals with various disabilities which I have nevertheless defined as socially constructed. In doing so I am suggesting no pejorative associations. Through this project I wanted to explore notions of disability within various debates associated with disability and society. I have done this in the context of my own experience of disability, and my own attempts to come to terms with disability. In this sense this project represents a personal journey.
- ItemOpen AccessJust Don't Know How She Does It: a Feminist's Showroom of Subversive Machinations(2018) Robertson, Emily Harriet Bulbring; Zaayman, Carine; Skotnes, PippaI have created a body of work that takes the form of a series of inventions or products aimed at giving their users the appearance of conforming to existing gender stereotypes pertaining to the roles of women, whilst actually allowing them to live a life of their own choosing. I have communicated my intentions through the media of collage, montage, installation and mixed-media assemblage. The collective body of work is displayed in the mode of a showroom, as one might encounter in a home exposition or convention. Some of the stereotypes I have found most pervasive in my lived experiences, and those of the women I know, include sentiments such as: all women should be docile and submissive; a woman's life is incomplete without a husband and child; women's primary concerns should be the domestic space and serving their families; a career or other personal goals should never be prioritised over family and home; a woman's body and sexuality is purely for male pleasure and consumption, and she should be damned if she behaves otherwise. As a point of departure in the development of this project I have focused on how these stereotypes are perpetuated within popular culture. I have taken cues from Pop art especially concerning the way in which these artists have employed images and objects from everyday consumer culture. To recall, Pop art was a movement that emerged in the 1950s and responded to the increasingly pervasive and omnipresent consumerist culture. Through mimicry of consumer product design and making use of mass media objects, artists critiqued the agendas of their capitalist society. One of the major instances of parody that occurred within the movement was in the elevation of ordinary products or celebrities to subject matter for high art, such as in Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans (1962) or in Jeff Koons's New Shelton Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981). The framing of consumer culture as high art invited a reconsideration of the value of such objects as well as the institution of high art. The title of this exhibition acknowledges its Pop art lineage, as it references Richard Hamilton's seminal collage piece Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956). The inter-textual reference to Hamilton's work is further articulated by my use of collage and the ironic, self-aware employment of references to consumer culture. Artists working within the Pop milieu, such as Hamilton, are noted for their use of irony and parody, which cuts into both consumer culture and fine art practices. Such double-edged critique also underpins this project
- ItemOpen AccessNadir : a graphic interpretation of dispossession and aspects of conflict(1988) Ractliffe, Jo; Skotnes, PippaDispossession, aspects of conflict and the breakdown of the relationship between people and their environment is the subject of this thesis. The body of work presented consists of twenty-four photographs and sixteen screen-printed off-set lithographs (referred to as the prints). The photographs are largely intended to introduce and contextualize the prints which act as the main body and conclusion of the thesis. In the series of prints I have manipulated certain photographic imagery in order to explore the ways in which meaning can shift with changes in context, and reveal associations not apparent in the original photographs. This book is divided into four sections: 1. Sources and context: This section contains a brief outline of the historical tradition of apocalyptic literature and its relevance to our times, as well as a discussion of some of the literary texts to which I have referred. All the visual source material for my prints was derived from my own photographs. As a result, I have not looked to other artist's works for reference, or for the development of my theme. Of great importance, however, were the texts I read during the course of my study, which included a wide and diverse range of literature and poetry. I have also looked to film as a source, including popular cinema such as George Miller's "Mad Max" series, as well as the more serious aspects of cinema, for example, the films of Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders. While my prints do not necessarily fall within the mainstream of apocalyptic, they have in common with it, a particular attitude towards the present. It is the vision of imminent chaos and the desire for a return to a restored natural order that has informed my work. 2. My working methods and their implications: This section contains an explication of the processes involved in the making of the prints, and the manner in which these processes contributed to the meaning of the images. Also included is a discussion of the relationship between my photography and my printmaking. 3. Introduction to the work: This section introduces my theme. In my photographs I have documented those aspects of southern African urban and rural landscape which reveal evidence of the erosion of the natural environment, as well as the physical manifestations of displacement. In my prints, I have disintegrated, translated and recontextualised these images. While the theme of my work lies within the broad context of apocalyptic, it is the individual's conflicts and sense of displacement within that context that has been of particular interest to me. As the apocalypticist expressed the tensions and conflicts of his time in a language of symbols, so I have similarly presented a response to my environment. It is not my intention in this section to present an interpretation of my work, but rather to highlight those aspects important to an understanding of the motives I had in making the images. In addition, this book includes documentation of the photographs and prints, preparatory sketches and collages, reproductions of source photographs, and a selection of literary texts which informed the work.
- ItemOpen AccessNative work : an impulse of tenderness(2013) Putter, Andrew; Skotnes, PippaNative Work is an installation-artwork consisting of 38 portrait photographs. It was made in response to an encounter with the archive of Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin’s photographs of black southern Africans taken between 1919 and 1939. In its creative focus on traditional black South African culture in a post-apartheid context, Native Work is one of a series of related - but independent - projects occurring contemporaneously with it in the city of Cape Town (a situation examined more closely in the conclusion to this document: see p. 33). Native Work is motivated by a desire for social solidarity - a desire which emerges as a particular kind of historical possibility in the aftermath of apartheid. As such, it finds inspiration in Duggan-Cronin’s commitment to affirm the lives of those black South Africans who many of his peers would have dismissed as unworthy subjects of such attention. Native Work echoes that commitment by staying close to an impulse of tenderness discernible in Duggan-Cronin’s life-long project, and pays homage not only to Duggan-Cronin, but also to the expressive life of those who appeared in his work.
- ItemOpen AccessPersonal memory and the negotiation of identity : a self portrait(1998) Pratt, Sarah Jane; Skotnes, PippaThe first section of this paper surveys the differing characteristics of memory, its fragmentary qualities, its constant negotiation within the present, its personalised form and its links to identity-formation and construction. Concepts of continuity, stabilising identity within the present, and their corresponding memory-related problems are discussed. Photographs are looked at in relation to memory as well as for their ability to inform or influence individual identity. References to the multi-faceted information that is unconsciously assimilated from multi-media sources in today's society, and the resultant identity related complexities introduce a more personal outlook on historically specific factors that appear to have destabilised identity. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is briefly introduced from the perspective of recreating one collective national memory and the implicit complexities involved on both a personal and collective level. Section two of the paper establishes the importance of place in the formation of identity and then looks specifically at historical incidents that are relevant to my personal self-consciousness. Zimbabwean land reform issues, political racism and economic problems are presented as occurrences powerful enough to trigger the conscious scrutiny of identity and a personal sense of the past. Travel-related experiences are discussed with issues pertaining to the destabilisation felt when the individual is introduced to "other" discourses or cultures. Exposure to these occurrences, and conjecture surrounding their "ripple effect" on the individual provide the starting point from which to understand the motivation behind my body of practical work. The third section of this paper looks closely at the problems, possibilities and variations involved in making a body of work around the concept of personal memory. The history of etching is briefly discussed, and the method of etching is compared to the recollection process. Finally, the panel of work is presented as a "heritage site" to the viewer, and a form of re-evaluation of identity for the maker. A series of narrative texts are sourced as personal springs that triggered the production of each image, and serve to accompany or enrich the artworks themselves.
- ItemOpen AccessPositioning the Cape : a spatial engraving of a shifting frontier(1998) Bull, Katherine Gay; Skotnes, Pippa; Payne, MalcolmIn June this year I read an article entitled Eve's footprints safe in museum (Cape Times 24.6.98). The footprints had just been removed from the shore of the Langebaan lagoon. The footprints, imprinted in stone, have been dated to 117 000 years. The media use of the name Eve is an example of how theoretical possibility can become popular fact. The prints became exposed when the stone happened to crack and slide off along the strata that held the prints. Exposed to the elements and to a public who want to have their photograph taken standing where Eve once stood, the soft sandstone which held such a transient impression began to deteriorate rapidly. An article earlier in the year reported on the debate around the future of the prints. The geologist David Roberts, who discovered the prints, wanted them removed as soon as possible while Dr. Janette Deacon from the National Monuments Council was reported to have said, "We should rather see it preserved at the site as moving it would destroy a lot of its meaning. A museum display could never recreate the atmosphere of that scene" (Cape Times 14.1.98).
- ItemOpen AccessThe principles of packing a case study of two travelling(2012) Butcher, Clare; Skotnes, Pippa; Hamilton, CarolynThe travelling exhibition was formalised in a series of manuals, The Organization of Museums: Practical Advice (Museums and Monuments Series, IX) published by UNESCO as recently as the 1960s. Promoted as a utility for societies seeking to mediate rapid cultural change to one another in the period following the Second World War, my study highlights how certain elements of this display genre could be seen as inherent to all exhibitions: firstly, that carefully selected objects have the power to transport ideological and aesthetic values; secondly, that exhibitions are transient objects, in themselves worthy of study, as constructs of logistical, conceptual, public and political bolts and joints; and thirdly, that exhibition curators often play the role of diplomat – negotiating and mediating meaning across borders of various kinds. Though seemingly an obscure example, the large-scale international exchange of the Exhibition of Contemporary British Paintings and Drawings (1947-8) and the Exhibition of Contemporary South African Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture (1948-9) between the colonial centre and so-called ‘periphery’ of the South African Union, is a complex case study within a certain trajectory of travelling exhibitions. Never dealt with previously, the occurrence of such an exchange is significant not only because of its political context – in an immediate post-war, pre-apartheid moment – but also because many of the curatorial strategies used in the exchange process are heralded in UNESCO’s manual of Travelling Exhibitions (1953). To unpack this British-South African colonial freight could be easily regarded as a ‘merely’ art historical or archival gesture. If however, we understand the archive to be an historically determined framework within which to arrange cultural knowledge (Hamilton 2011), then an archive of travelling exhibitions makes both actual and contingent those cultural arrangements – the transient curatorial ‘principles of packing’ (UNESCO 1963). This project asserts that whether or not an exhibition is designated as such, travelling, as both an approach and the effect of curatorship, becomes the utility for mobilising not only objects but also ideas between contexts as seemingly disparate as those of the 1940s exhibitions or in today’s expansive ‘art worlds’.
- ItemOpen AccessRepresentations of the Black subject in Irma Stern's African periods : Swaziland, Zanzibar and Congo 1922-1955(2013) Kellner, Clive; Skotnes, Pippa; Hamilton, CarolynThis dissertation explores the major themes of Irma Stern's (1894-1966) representation of the black figurative subject in her African periods: Swaziland, Zanzibar and Congo (1922-1955). Germane to these periods are Stern's childhood experience in the Transvaal and her training and influences in Germany. My research aims to do the following: (1) address a gap in the current literature on Irma Stern and her African periods (2) to consider whether Stern's mature periods, Zanzibar and Congo reveal an imaginary 'primitivist' mode of representation. Central to my research is the question of Stern's identity as a woman, settler and Jew, as it is critical to exploring the relation between Stern as a white settler and that of her black figurative subjects as viewed through the discourse of 'primitivism'. My methodology involves drawing from various archives, primary and secondary literature on Stern and Stern's own writings. My visual methodology includes a comparative analysis of Stern's early paintings in relation to her influences and formal and iconographic analysis of select 'mature' paintings.
- ItemOpen AccessThrough the garden fence(2016) Robins, Kathy; Skotnes, Pippa; Zaayman, CarineThis project attempts to tie together different threads of my experience. It begins with the memory of looking through the garden fence and hedge of my childhood and considers the simultaneously separate and enmeshed lives of my immediate family and those outside of it. In this project I have engaged with the garden as a point of connection, a means by which to consider the possibility of more Edenic, sustainable futures rooted in concepts of care. An investigation into care, through my making, has been central to my research. Under the harsh structures of apartheid, the natural world carried on in spite of the social and environmental restrictions implemented by the apartheid government. I am interested primarily in human experiences of care, belonging and relationship against the backdrop of migrancy, the displacement of discarded people to infertile land, and the loss of indigenous cultures and natural areas. My intention in this work is for the viewer to be reminded of the unending cycles of nature - seasons, joy, nurturance and recurrence - in their silent yet peripatetic way. In this turning towards nature there is a recognition of the spiritual essence of the world as separate and distinct from humankind's inhumanity to each other. In a contemporary context, the prevalence of people from across Africa displaced into South Africa demands a closer consideration of human connections to the land, as does the recent crisis of Syrian migrants in Europe and the ensuing ethnic xenophobia. At present there are 60 million people displaced due to war, religious tension, politics and race. However, there is hope in the care provided by non-governmental organisations, the United Nations, governments and grassroots initiatives; people who want to help those with a bag and a child on their back.
- ItemOpen AccessTracing the passion of a black Christ: critical reflections on the iconographic revision and symbolic redeployment of the Stations of the Cross and Passion cycle by South African artists Sydney Kumalo, Sokhaya Charles Nkosi and Azaria Mbatha(2016) Macdonald, James; Skotnes, Pippa; MacKenny, Virginia; Bogues, AnthonyIn this research I consider ways in which black South African artists working during and after apartheid have both revised and symbolically redeployed the Stations of the Cross - and more broadly, the iconographic tradition of the Passion cycle. In so doing, I demonstrate the strategic application of Christ's episodic sufferings as a means of both analogously chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as articulating more aspirant narratives of political resistance, selfliberation and reconciliation. Concentrating initially on church-commissioned projects realised in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I trace the reinterpretation (or 'Africanisation') of the Stations of the Cross by artists such as Bernard Gcwensa, Ruben Xulu and Sydney Kumalo. Noting the emergence of a black Christ and a localised Passion, I emphasise the complex cultural and political implications of this iconographic transformation - arguing that its hybrid realisation undermined the cultural bias of a European-styled Christianity, and the racial hierarchies of colonialism and apartheid. Following this, considered in more detail are the secular reimaginings of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi's Crucifixion (1976) and Azaria Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa (1995) - as series wherein the episodes of Christ's Passion are consciously and symbolically redeployed. In the case of Nkosi's Crucifixion, I show as covertly documented in a black Christ's sufferings the incarceration and torture of political activists in apartheid South Africa. On a more ideological level, I demonstrate also, as embodied in the series, the aspirant directives of Black Consciousness and Black Theology. Turning to Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, I present its visual narrative as analogously envisioning, as well as critically rethinking, the mutually embedded traumas of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Significant to my analysis is the future vision of reconciliation posited by Mbatha, and the extent to which it both reflects and challenges that maintained within the 'transformative' programme of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Demonstrated in my evaluation of these appropriative projects is the way in which a traditionally European iconographic tradition is critically redeployed - in chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as in the envisioning of alternative futures. As such, I hope to afford a more nuanced and challenging appreciation of these reimagined Passion narratives, as significant projects of cultural and postcolonial memory. In keeping with this, I advance in conclusion a 'rethinking of pilgrimage'. Recalling the culture of participative witness associated with devotional programmes like the Stations of the Cross, I propose that in the case of both Nkosi's Crucifixion and Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, extended to viewers is a certain imperative: to imaginatively revisit, and rethink within the present, traumatic histories of black suffering and resistance.
- ItemOpen AccessAn unknown country(2013) Jenks, Peter; Skotnes, Pippa; Van der Schijff, JohannIn this Master's project, my work has been concerned with a number of ideas associated with old age and ageing, and with the physical, psychological and social conditions and changes that attend this period of human life. The realisation that one is reaching what is commonly understood as old age is a paradoxical one: a sense of change accompanied by wisdom and insight, yet also the recognition of decline and the stasis that accompanies this. In order to discuss old age it is necessary to try to define the term and to identify what the boundaries are between youth, 'middle-age' and old age. In popular culture, at times expressed through poetry, the progression through life is seen in easily identified stages, variously numbered from three (infancy, adulthood, old age) to Shakespeare's classic 'seven ages of man' from his play As You Like It. Despite this variety, the 'old age' state is generally accompanied by greying hair, and the noticeable onset of physical and cognitive deterioration. These various stages of human development are all affected by significant life events and crises, in many cases marked or celebrated by rites of passage for events such as leaving school after matriculating, marriage, the birth of a child, or celebration of the first year of a new decade. There is no definitive marker for the onset of old age, but perhaps the closest is that of formal retirement from working life, typically around the age of 65. Although many transitional events can be uplifting, bringing new gains and insights, they invariably involve some form of loss. In particular, it is the aged and elderly who suffer the greatest sense of loss as theirs are many and varied – children leave home, friends or family members die, the body begins to fail, mental abilities often diminish and social status is lost. More significantly, perhaps, old people often lose opportunities and the promises of the future. Yet despite these negative aspects, old age can also offer its own particular rewards and possibilities for growth, as my own experiences and investigations have shown.