Already have names
do was to explore why it was so easy to disregard existing plant knowledge and names,” says Orlow. “It is because it was oral knowledge. So it was much more ephemeral.
“So I started meeting people and started to record plant names. So the piece is basically an audio dictionary of plant names in about a dozen South African languages. It’s almost kind of, I don’t want to say rectifying this thing, but it is kind of engaging with it.”
Orlow stops himself a lot during our conversation. He does this to ponder the right word before speaking it, to pull out facts from the mental files that constitute what is an exhaustive body of work. And there are more symbolic stops to seemingly ponder how his own position guided his approach at different turns in assembling the work.
A large, grainy postcard-scene wallpaper of what looks like a river or waterway in Zurich (where Orlow was born) seems to provide our next segue. Red “geraniums” pepper the scene, especially in arrangements around a foregrounded bridge.
“Switzerland is full of red geraniums,” explains Orlow. “In Zurich, you see them all over the city. You see them on balconies, in the aisles. They are almost considered a national symbol. But what you discover is that they come from the Cape. They were brought by the Dutch East India Company because there was big hunger in the horticultural industry. All the aristocrats wanted new exotic plants.”
Only, the plants were not geraniums, which are apparently biologically incapable of being red. Misidentified for more than a century, the Swiss have never bothered to correct the name to pelargonium, a fact that still leaves out what the other populations of the Cape called them.
Orlow’s collaborative work, which includes a book with essays and bookin representations of the exhibited work, brings up not only flora but characters not popularly known in South Africa’s historical cannon. Among these is Mafavuke Ngcobo, who inspired two short films in the exhibition, one of them titled The Crown Against Mafavuke, a restaging of his 1940 trial, which centred on the illegality of mixing of Western and indigenous medicine.
“Mafavuke’s story is about the ecoing panels. Her work should most certainly be in my collection. Her art practice examines the ways in which black culture is commodified and fetishised.
Red Door Gallery in Lagos: Mixed media by Fatai Adewale, whose work focuses on themes and subjects rangform nomic power of plants,” says Orlow. “There were laws about what pharmacists could do and what traditional healers could do, because izinyanga [healers] were very much controlled; they had to have a licence. Without a pharmacist licence, you weren’t able to use Western medicine.
“He was accused of using these ingredients, but underneath that there was a kind of ideological and professional competition, because he started a mail-order business. He was savvy and even white people started buying muthi from him. The white pharmacists got scared that he was taking their business, and this is why they mounted this trial.”
For the film, Orlow restages the trial with significant differences. For one, Mafavuke speaks to the audience in the trial, as if forcing us to bear witness. In the original trial, he did not speak.
In the staging of this 20-minute film, the actors change roles, switching gender and ethnicity. There is an additional accompanying video in which Mafavuke, as if turning in his grave at the current status quo, sets up a tribunal to question the rise of bioprospecting by pharmaceuticals in South Africa.
There is also a photographic exhibition at the Market Photo Workshop titled The Memory of Trees, an installation that portrays trees as witnesses and holders of history. And, there is a video installation in collaboration with Lindiwe Matshikiza titled The Fairest Heritage, in which she places herself, in various costumes, in front of projected images of the archive photographs of the 50th anniversary of the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, celebrated in 1963 in Cape Town.
One may well ask why a work of this magnitude and importance had to be sparked by a Swiss artist, who stumbled on it while on a coffee break in the Kirstenbosch gardens. from global politics, history, identity and culture. Art is my passion. I am invested in it. It keeps me engaged and feeds
It’s a question Russell Hlongwane, a researcher for the Durban leg of the project, which kicks off on September 14, was confronted with as well when he visited Professor Kaya Hassan at the Indigenous Knowledge Systems school based at the University of KwaZuluNatal (UKZN).
It was a difficult question for Hlongwane to contend with but one that, thinking of it now, makes him reflect on his own ethics and Orlow’s practice.
“I have never engaged with this area of practice and it is difficult to enter,” says Hlongwane. “The way Uriel has set it up was to provide easy access into this area of practice without dumbing the material down.
“The main proponent of the research into this field in Durban was Mkhuluwe “Zihlahla zemithi” Cele. I didn’t know about his practice, but he was a central figure in the preservation and the advocacy and lobbying of traditional healers in KwaZulu-Natal, during apartheid and post-apartheid, leading up to his passing. What he had set up — I think it’s unfortunate that it’s not in the public imagination.
“But then to also see how he had started making inroads into the academy, the University of DurbanWestville [now part of UKZN] had an indigenous knowledge systems department. He had started locating his work in different areas and different spheres, and they are interacting with this area of indigenous knowledge practices.”
A spinoff for Hlongwane is that he will collaborate further with the centre after this project is over, giving Theatrium Botanicum even more legs than it could have imagined. my soul. The energy just flows seamlessly and enables me to focus on the business of living fully, meaningfully and intentionally.