Gunn-Salie’s Senzenani hailed at Joburg Art Fair
THE next challenge for Cape Townborn artist and activist Haroon Gunn-Salie will be to bring his chilling installation, Senzenina, depicting murdered Marikana miners, to more sites around South Africa.
Gunn-Salie was recently announced as the 2018 recipient of the highly coveted FNB Art Prize and was able to showcase his work in a dedicated exhibition space at the FNB Joburg Art Fair at the Sandton Convention Centre at the weekend.
Gunn-Salie joined the ranks of previous winners such as Peju Alatise, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Turiya Magadlela, Portia Zvavahera and Kudzanai Chiurai.
Gunn-Salie has established a collaborative art practice that translates community oral histories into artistic interventions and installations. His multidisciplinary practice uses a variety of mediums, drawing focus to forms of collaboration in contemporary art based on dialogue and exchange.
Currently based between Johannesburg and Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Gunn-Salie completed his BA Honours in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2012.
Gunn-Salie said his Senzenina work had elicited emotional reactions from audiences. The installation transports the viewer to the site of the massacre, with an immersive soundscape presenting a schematic re-creation of the minutes before and after the deaths, using archival audio and composed elements.
The soundscape includes calls for the mineworkers to disassemble peacefully; the fortification of the surrounding area and entrapment of the workers by police; an anti-apartheid freedom song lamented by the mineworkers moments before live ammunition was discharged; and blasts from the mine recalled by low-frequency sonic vibrations of the surrounding landscape emanating from an outcrop of granite boulders on the site.
Gunn-Salie said in Joburg yesterday: “The installation has been powerfully received. The response has been strong. I was hoping for that. My work is about social activism, so this is what I was hoping for. The piece transports you physically to the scene.
“We brought a piece of protest art to the Sandton Convention Centre,” he said, “which counted as a sort of revolution in itself. We are working on the homecoming of the exhibition, including the sculpture figures, and new and ongoing collaborative work.”
This would likely be possible by next year. “The piece is so strong, we have a responsibility to further its audience. We want to try and get it to different places in South Africa, it’s a very fortunate challenge.”