Anita Funke

Conrad Botes, Nicholas Hlobo and Thembinkosi Goniwe, three South African artists, have been chosen to participate in the Guangzhou Triennial in China, which will take place between 6 September and 16 November this year.
The main theme of the triennial proposes to say ‘Farewell to Post-Colonialism’, and draw attention to identity politics and restrictions which have been the unwitting result of such discourse, says a statement from Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj and Chang Tsong-zung, the central curatorial team-members.
The theme of saying ‘Farewell to Post-Colonialism’ is not simply “a departure, but a re-visit and a re-start” - a space to re-think the theoretical frameworks that help articulate an “ethics of difference” in cultural production, they say.
Artists have been called to renovate the theoretical interface of contemporary art – to depart from pervasive socio-economic discourse, and work to create new modes of thinking: a process of self-discovery in a globalised world.
According to Stina Edblom, a member of the wider curatorial team whose portfolio involves choosing artists whose work relates to Africa, nine artists have been confirmed for this category from around the world, three of whom are South African.
She said Botes, Hlobo, and Goniwe were artists whose work stimulated enquiry into centred identity, and thus invited critical dialogue about theories of difference.
Botes, who is working on a new piece for the triennial, said popular concepts of Africanness, which exist conceptually, are changing.
By superimposing African stereotypes onto European iconography, he suggests that “European perceptions of Africa and its people are something of the past,” as “borders are disappearing, and so is race”.
He added: “I am trying to suggest that the way that Africanism has been perceived has changed – it has died.”
Edblom praises the way Botes uses irony and satire to change perceptions.
“I really like his work because it’s not politically correct; he just does his own thing.”
“He becomes one with [cultural stereotypes] so that they will not colonise him,” and “when you play with stereotypes, you re-appropriate them, and you turn them into your tools, not someone else’s tools”.
Hlobo likewise “inserts himself in a local and global community” in his work, with Edblom highlighting the way he speaks of “localised differences” and interrogates black, male, Xhosa sexuality and identity.
Although she said his work speaks of South African experience, it also points to a shared, “general” identity struggle, which is not a national (or even personal) phenomenon.
Hlobo said: “The issues I challenge are not uniquely South African…People from different parts of the world deal with this in different ways.”
He believes that it is a “time of change” in terms of people’s views of South African art.
“We’ve managed to slowly change people’s perception of what African art should look like.”
Nonetheless, the perception that identity is geographically centred persists, with the result that members of the global audience still struggle to reconcile their concept of African art with the works themselves.
At times, they are concerned that it “doesn’t look African enough…. [and] some people don’t what to believe or accept [you’re African]”, said Hlobo.
In the same vein as Hlobo and Botes, Goniwe resists national, cultural, or racial definition: “I am an artist who happens to live in South Africa…[and] I don’t want my nationality to structure my thinking,” he said.
Likewise, “I don’t want to make the South African experience something unique, or differentiate between South Africa and the rest of the world.”
To this end, his project for the triennial is partly discursive, and according to Edblom, will “contextualise the exhibition through dialogues”.
The piece will be interactive, in order to stretch the exhibition space beyond the museum, and allow people to respond.
“I just want to create a space for interaction. If I can get that, that will be the achievement,” said Goniwe.
The Guangzhou Triennial will be a space “really to tease out a number of different perspectives and even provocations, to encourage [discussion],” said Edblom.
“You have all these negative images of Africa,” she said, but this opens up the possibility for independent creative spaces which “speak against modularisation