kagablog

Opening May 20 2009, 6.30pm

Press Release

‘The Double Body: being in space’ is an exhibition of new and recent installation and performance art by South African artists and explores the implicit relationship between physical performance, or presence, and architectural spaces. Drawing from a body of recent writing that makes a case for a corporeal “knowledge” of space, the works in this exhibition are invested in how the body locates itself in space and develops a sense of place, how installation environments may bear the traces of bodily presences and the different levels at which a viewer experiences an artwork. Many of the works, Alexander Opper’s installation, Auseinandersetzung, in the upper-level of the gallery, for instance, consist in an immediate sensory encounter for the viewer that takes place prior to a formal or analytical engagement with the work.

Nevertheless, each contribution to the exhibition has been rigorously conceived and carefully chosen to create an immersive network of spatial environments that exist in a carefully hewn poetic conversation with each another. This conversation will ring most clearly at the exhibition’s opening event, where Lerato Shadi, and Bronwyn Lace will present performance works and new video work by Nina Barnett, Same Seine, will be projected onto an outdoor “screen”. This exhibition has been designed to read best after dark, and uses unconventional lighting selected to meet the display demands of each work individually. In this way, the exhibition breaks with the temporal conventions of gallery viewing and relies on its external environment to determine the conditions of its legibility and meaning.

Participating artists are Marcus Neustetter, Bronwyn Lace, Alexander Opper, David Andrew, Nina Barnett, Johan Thom, Lerato Shadi, Phillip Raiford Johnson, Murray Kruger and Rodan Kane Hart.
Curated for the FADA Gallery. Johannesburg, by Anthea Buys.
A digital catalogue will be available from May 20 on the FADA website.

Opening: Wednesday May 20, 6.30pm.
Contact: Andthea Buys
antheabuys@mweb.co.za; 082 460 3427

jump especially when there is
no evidence of a net.

forget the road less traveled
head in to the woods.

i have none of the things
that “count”
no money
no food
no resources
no internet
but
lots of faith
in me and where i’m heading.

Psalm 139 v 13 - 16
(a psalm of david)

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

to those that fly high
beyond the skyline
of their combined
night time and daytime dreaming

the agony of truth
reflected on a mirror
will point back toward
their own void.

Waiting for Google to upload
the moment passes,
words vanish
as quickly as they had appeared

You with a ready pen,
paper the divine prostitute
laying bare awaiting your inscription
upon her soul.

You with a ready pen
able to pluck the mythical fruit as it
dances between this world, and the one
the eye won’t see.
For fear of recognizing
the nakedness that clothes us
and Eden within our mist.

You with a ready pen
who hears a voice
whispering beyond our internal monologue
“Eden is with-in you, seize your searching”
while I wait for Google to upload
reply back
“Yes this is a garden but where is the gardener”

By Mary Corrigall

Reminiscent of Bernie Searle’s inimitable brand of performance/video art, Lerato Shadi assembles visuals that are stripped of all pretensions, preferring to present base impulses unadorned by superfluous expression.

But that is where similarities between the artists end; while Shadi’s aesthetic is centred on laying bare the primordial compulsions that drive our society, she is self-conscious of her expression. This compels her to analyse her medium and its limitations.

Though this adds another rich dimension to her practice, it is the manner in which she is able to articulate such a variety of concepts through straightforward actions and imagery that makes her art so compelling.

Hema (or Six hours of out-breath captured in 792 balloons) (2007), for example, sees Shadi striving to capture the bare essence of existence by storing each of her breaths over a six-hour period in balloons.

Significantly, she chooses an office setting in which to enact this performance piece. No detail is coincidental to this work; every element of her imagery is functional. Even the architectural structure of the office (the advertising agency Ogilvy in Cape Town), an industrial formation in which the inner workings of the building’s mechanics are laid bare, has been selected to enhance Shadi’s performance.

Shadi positions herself at the centre of a symmetrical steel staircase that forms a diamond motif that looks much like a clock, alluding to the measuring of time. This creates the impression that Shadi is not only a cohesive element of the architectural space she is situated in, but also that her performance echoes the activities that habitually take place in the setting.

In a work setting where time is exchanged for money, existence has a tangible value; it is equated with the realisation of end products. In leisure time this is rarely the case; it is valued for its lack of productivity and its “timelessness”. Therefore, in the office environment existence has purpose and meaning. Shadi’s video proves, however, that such worth is subjective and work creates the illusion that existence has meaning.

From afar, the actions of the office workers seem arbitrary and pointless; people go up and down in lifts, cross the office, stare at their computers and type. Ultimately, in a philosophical sense, their preoccupations are as absurd and futile as filling balloons with air.

But Shadi’s repetitive and seemingly tedious performance isn’t simply engineered to highlight the meaninglessness and tedium of daily existence; it also articulates a compulsion to capture the bare essence of physical subsistence.

If Shadi is able to capture each breath that she exhales, then she will have a grasp on what it is to be a living being.

Instead of measuring time/being with a mechanical man-made contraption such as a clock, she relies on each inhalation and exhalation as a marker of time. Shadi chooses a frivolous receptacle to contain her exhalations; balloons have a short life span and are associated with frolicsome celebrations rather than a philosophical quest.

Shadi’s objective also appears to conflict with her final product. She has purposively set out to capture every moment yet the finished product sees her six-hour balloon blowing marathon edited down to an eight-minute video. Why go to such lengths to document each living moment only to discard these “precious” seconds/minutes/hours of existence?

Ultimately, though, Shadi’s tactics are driven by perceptive logic; experience is fleeting and intangible and our physical experience of living is divorced from how we process it psychologically. In our minds our experiences aren’t remembered in full detail; we cannot recall the minutiae of our existence. Instead, memory is composed of edited versions of experience.

Shadi also suggests that the compulsion to capture reality can only ever offer superficial results. The vehicles or mediums, such as video that artists employ to capture reality, remove real-time experience from the equation, imparting a sense of timelessness that contradicts the nature of being. So although Hema is visually rooted in an ordered, concrete context that assumes that time/experience can be measured, she suggests that existence cannot be quantified because it is an ethereal concept.

Aboleleng (2007) sees the artist engaging in another fruitless activity. In this video artwork Shadi is seen going through the painful experience of giving birth, however, what emerges from her womb is a long, narrow crotcheted scarf, signifying an umbilical cord, rather than a baby.

Employing a green screen – a neutral background that film-makers use to enable computer-generated imagery to be integrated at a later stage – Shadi draws the viewers’ attention to the act in which she is engaged, rather than an external condition that shapes action. It is the pure act of creation that Shadi is referencing.

Yet the object Shadi brings to life, the long crotcheted scarf that is also displayed under a spotlight adjacent to the screen, has no purpose. The scarf/cord may be fashioned to resemble the detailing on a baby’s booties and clothing but it is not a living, breathing being; it is a lifeless entity that refers to a newborn.

Shadi suggests that although art objects may not be living, breathing entities, they exist in ways common to living beings. Just as humans give birth to children so too can they bring ideas to life. Shadi obviously shares a deep connection to her art that she likens to offspring.

l Lerato Shadi’s exhibition is on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until the end of January

this article was first published in the sunday independent of 13 january 2007

Hema or: Six hours of out-breath captured in 792 balloons
2007
Digital video projection with sound
Duration 5 min 26 sec
camera - tam wege
editor - tamsyn reynolds
sound design - warrick sony

Aboleleng
2007
Digital video projection, and wool installation
duration 4 min 59 sec
director - amichai tahor
camera and lighting design - dusko marovic
editor - aryan kaganof

you write like i want to live
like i want to make art.
tear open my own skin no matter how it hurts
and subject the world to the beauty of my despair.

thank you

for being you
for your life
and for writing your truth

thank you

Love
Lerato