HERE TODAY
A burst of creativity with no commercial agenda erupts at the Stellenbosch Triennale
The scent of 40 burning candles and a braid of hair above them, threatening to catch fire, and the toll of a slave bell in Stellenbosch — where else? — engage more than visual senses at the Cape’s first art Triennale.
The free-to-the-public Stellenbosch Triennale blasted onto the art scene this month following the hugely successful Cape Town Art Fair. The Triennale has installations from 40 acclaimed African artists, all of them currently living in Africa.
In the Curator’s Exhibition, a huge charcoal sketch with Braille circles of poetry and images and LED lights tracking the final flight path of the Ethiopian plane hijacked by Somalian asylum seekers, catches the eye. It’s accompanied by a video of the crash made by a South African holidaymaker in the Comoro Islands. The installation is called Birdcall961 and it’s by Ghanian Kelvin Hazel.
Curator Dr Bernard Akoi-Jackson says the layered installation reflects the Triennale’s theme: “Tomorrow there will be more of us”. “Even in crashing to death, they had this hope of a better life, the wish that we could become better someday, tomorrow. We’re always looking to the future.”
In a work by Nigerian artist Victor Ehikhamenor, rosaries are threaded into the canvas and are bracketed by a wooden doorway (found at the exhibition site) which goes nowhere … literally at least. Figuratively the art works are like the doors in Alice in Wonderland — opening onto worlds where not all is as it seems.
Ehikhamenor says he explores the duality between the spirit and science, and African and colonial religious traditions through his artwork, Saints and Sanctums. “The rosary is a piece of colonialism introduced to Nigeria … I’m creating a bridge between two things,” he says.
“The art in this place bridges (the barriers) that exist because of the lack of diversity in exhibitions in the past. It helps us to see our common humanity. I’m making new friends here … breaking the Stellenbosch bubble. South Africa has been insular for the longest time.”
In the curator’s space there’s also a heap of cow dung in a rondavel with flung dung walls, created by Kenyan Kaloki Nyamai, and a black box with a sound piece by Angolan Nastio Mosquito. There are 10 massive coffins by Ibrahim Mahama from Ghana and 10 protruding blood-red tongues in The Talking Yoni by Reshma Chhiba of South African Indian descent, who’s exploring concepts of sexuality and disruption through the Hindu deity Kali.
The internationally feted artist from KwaZulu-Natal, Sethembile Msezane, leans across her artwork Signal Her
Return I.
“This piece is a living installation for women who died in undignified circumstances, like Sarah Baartman, those whose souls are not at rest,” she says of the meditative space, complete with lit candles.
“In our country women are killed daily. Sometimes there aren’t any witnesses to their deaths. As artists, we need to ensure they are remembered.”
More than 400 artists submitted works to the Triennale and all 20 on the curators’ A-list were accepted, says the event organiser Andi Norton.
“A Triennale is different from an art exhibition,” says Norton. “The artists can let their imaginations go and play without thinking ‘Will this last?’. They have the freedom of a non-commercial space. The art is not for sale and some artists here don’t even have gallery representation.”
The Stellenbosch Outdoor Sculpture Trust, the Iziko South African National Gallery, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, the Norval Foundation and the Cape Town Art Fair were among those who gave the Triennale their support, says Norton.
Worldwide there are about 660 biennales and triennales. There’s been nothing south of Dak’Art (Dakar, Senegal) since the successful Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 (where David Bowie played) and its successor in 1997.
“We know the world is watching the Stellenbosch Triennale,” says Norton, explaining what a feat it was to get art works safely here from across Africa. “‘We have a patron per artist,” she says of their funding model, which relies on many patrons, as does the sculpture trust that has put more than 130 works from 84 artists on Stellenbosch’s streets.
Of the Triennale theme, the chief curator Khanyisile Mbongwa writes: “We are here today, thinking through yesterday to imagine and manifest tomorrow …”