‘From No Fixed Place’, a space appears
If we purposefully make space for any group that has been prevented from participation and representation — pushed to the margins, or erased altogether from culturallyvalidated forms of public self-representation — we have to speak about why such extraordinary efforts are necessary. Inevitably, there will be those who do not believe that historical erasures exist.
Purposefully making a space to include women’s — particularly black women’s — artwork and their voices in discussions that pertain to the social, economic, and political spaces in which art-making, art-displaying and art-selling exist, always brings about anxieties that insidiously and systematically resist changes to the status quo.
Thus, a curator cannot set out to explore the artistic practices of emerging and established women artists, to offer “different perspectives of the widespread socio-political issues faced by women, while also highlighting their contribution to the art world” without dissenting voices in the background.
These concerns are especially pertinent when we are speaking about correcting erasures at an art fair. After all, it is a context that is meant to be an inviting and pleasurable commercial space to the consumer — not one that makes the public have to think too hard about difficult histories or, worse, the difficult present.
Nontobeko Ntombela, as curator of this year’s SOLO exhibition at the Cape Town Art Fair, is confident that the fair also offers a “space to conscientise the general public about critical debates with which artists are engaging in their work, but also to make possible serious conversations a commonplace and part of the everyday”.
Along with the usual gallery stands that are a central part of the art fair business, SOLO operates in concert with several other sections focused solely on emerging artists. Ntombela’s choice, to focus on women artists, “is aimed at presenting varying perspectives of the widespread socio-political issues faced by women in both public and private spheres, while also highlighting the contribution of women to the art world”.
For her, given the “prejudice that women face on a daily basis and the current public uproar on femicide” creates the need to “turn the spotlight on women in the arts, particularly women of colour”.
Violence targeted at erasing the bodies of women tells us that their physical, emotional, and political and intellectual labour remains a threat. It causes enough public anxiety that they must face the danger or erasure, be it through physical violence or through less obvious ways.
Ntombela notes that Innovative Women in 2009, “caused a public stir when the then Arts and Cultural minister Lulu Xingwana walked out of the exhibition claiming the exhibition was pornographic”; the cause of offence was Zanele Muholi’s work, depicting intimate, beautiful, and alluring scenes between lesbian women. This occurred in a context in which lesbians are being raped and murdered, and in which the history of same-sex love is being violently cut from South Africa’s narrative.
More recently, Ntombela reminds us, that the Our Lady exhibition at the National Gallery revealed glaring problems underlying the ways in which elite art spaces and curatorial practices continue to violently excise women artists from the public consciousness. In this case, despite publicly advertising itself as an exhibition that celebrated “empowered female capacity”, art by men made up 75% of the works chosen by curators — only three black women were represented.
Especially bizarre in a exhibition meant to celebrate women was the inclusion of Zwelethu Mthethwa — who was then on trial (and eventually convicted) for the brutal, CCTV-recorded murder of 23-yearold sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo — without any acknowledgement of his involvement in a violent crime against a woman.
Ntombela points out that women artists have not only contributed to the arts, but have been “great catalysts when it comes to fostering debates that raise awareness about the oppression of women”. She lists off the names: “Zanele Muholi, Dineo Bopape, Nandipha Mntambo, Tracey Rose and Berni Searle to name a few have been catalysts in drawing attention to this space. Their work has challenged historical misrepresentations” and, at the same time, propelled a deeper public understanding “of gender and sexuality, among other things”.
This iteration of SOLO, which Ntombela titles From No Fixed Place, stresses the point that the selected artists speak beyond surface-level representation of gender and its relationship to aesthetics. Instead, each artist in SOLO situates themselves in the critical position of the storyteller, exploring “the alter-self — as a spiritual being, a myth, a sexual being, a history-maker, a part of the cosmological world, a form-landscape, a cityscape, an archaeological site, a vessel, a body, and so forth”.
They tell compelling stories about what it means to be living in a world in flux as beings informed by history and the present.
Ntombela’s selection of artists come from a range of geographical locations: Uganda’s Stacey Gillian Abe, Italian-Senegalese artist Maimouna Guerresi, Keyezua (a binational of Angola and the Netherlands), Botswana-born Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Jamaican-American artist Renee Cox, and South Africans Lhola Amira, Kimathi Mafafo, Ingrid Bolton, Lucinda Mudge, and Buhlebezwe Siwani.
Attaching these artists to a particular nation — to mark them as a product or representation of the nation state — isn’t possible. They have moved, and have been moved, by larger geopolitical upheavals that imprinted themselves on their different heritages.
The 10 artists use a range of materials and form, exploring the aesthetics of being unmoored from both traditional categories — like the nation, gender, or formal expectations of artists. They explore commonly-held notions of identity that not only limit our views, but also what we expect of