Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
National Arts Festival showcases works of ‘creative disruption’
Historical, political and social threads run through the works
AS THE 43rd instalment of the National Arts Festival prepares to draw to a close tomorrow, attendees at this year’s event were privy to a myriad historical, political and social works – curated under the theme of creative disruption.
This year’s festivall, dwelt on themes of war, death, land struggle, white supremacy, spirituality, and urbanisation.
These resonated greatly with audiences, as did thoughtprovoking arts exhibitions and installations.
There were a wide rage of artworks on display at the event, but the most captivating were three exhibitions on the upper level of Grahamstown’s Albany Museum.
The exhibitions showcased documentary-style black and white imagery with the aid of colour new media, which brought the space alive.
A century after the sinking of the SS Mendi off the Isle of Wight on a foggy night in 1917, the spirits of dead black troops were awakened in a multimedia installation.
The photographic exhibition commemorates the centenary of the sinking of the ship that carried black South African troops to the Western Front during the World War I.
Combining history with new media, it takes form with works by three artists, which include rare photographs and documents, poetry, underwater footage of the Mendi wreck, and footage of the ceremony at sea that paid tribute to the families of the men who died aboard the doomed vessel.
The ill-fated ship left Cape Town in January 1917 with 823 passengers aboard, most of whom were members of the SA Native Labour Contingent.
But on the fateful morning of February 21, 1917, before the Mendi reached its intended destination of France, the ship was rammed by a merchant ship which was travelling at a high speed. As you enter the exhibition space, it unfolds with images of black troops transporting boxes loaded on their heads on to the ship. It then takes the the viewer on a journey through to the men’s last breath.
There are scenes in the exhibition that are intersected with a video of the wrecked ship underwater, and of a ceremony held to honour the lost troops.
The videos are followed by portraits of two men who drowned at sea, juxtaposed with a tombstone burial ground and a commentary sculpture of fallen troops.
The exhibition is also occupied by testimonies of four black Mendi survivors, including that of William Bonafacious Mathumetse, the last man to abandon ship, who survived by resting upon the lifebelts of two dead soldiers.
He managed to survive in the icy water from where he was eventually rescued. When he returned home, Mathumetse resumed his studies and became a teacher and evangelist.
A huge wall-to-wall landscape painting of a depiction of the stricken ship and the troops drowning at sea, and some being rescued – also features in the exhibition.
“The exhibition references the struggle against the Natives Land Act of 1913 as a reason why these men left their homes in rural South Africa to contribute to the war effort,” a note on the wall of the exhibition reads.
It continued: “The exhibition is about recognising the role the people of the Mendi played in a broader struggle for land, human rights and dignity in South Africa.” Directly opposite the Abantu Bemendi exhibition is Andrew Tshabangu’s Footprints, which comprises a series of black and white photographic impressions, generated during daily excursions.
Footprints outlines encounters of everyday impressions of activities, locomotion, the metropolitan and rural areas.
There are also moments captured in Johannesburg, Durban, Maputo, Malawi and New York.
The exhibition is an assembling of portraits of street vendors, taxi commuters found in the city, spiritual and religious worshippers at different sacred sites, family spaces and hostels of migrant workers; moments of rural dwelling, and occasions of fishing and leisure time at the seaside.
In the middle of the space lies a huge landscape colour image of a traditional healer at sea, which breaks the black and white theme.
According to curator Thembinkosi Goniwe: “The photographs are a search for and discovery of how to make present the human spirit in pictorial representation; a spirit of hope, desire and dreaming of transcendence.
“Such a profound representational tact is through a creative resolve whose delicacy and reflective benevolence signals the steady spiritual fortitude of black people who confront daily socio-economic challenges of a society wrestling with transformation, freedom, justice and equality,” Goniwe said.
In another space, They Are Greeting is on exhibition, furthering the dialogue between tradition and the contemporary, rural and urban, material and spiritual, Africa and the West.
The exhibition by Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi consists of paintings, prints and sculpture, the works themselves falling into two distinct categories: traditionalists and modernists.
Confronting the work and self-reflecting on our lost traditions, Sebidi’s work speaks to the realism of modernised culture.
The exhibitions will run until tomorrow at the Albany Museum.