(Frances Baard,
militant trade unionist and leader of the ANC Women’s League, sculpted by Anton
Momberg. Kimberley, 5 February 2013)
The KZNSA Gallery is currently presenting major photographs
in the ongoing Structures series by
David Goldblatt. Structures is a
major body of work described by the late Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer as “an
extraordinary visual history of a country and its people."
For five decades, Goldblatt has travelled South Africa
photographing sites weighted with historical narrative: monuments, as well as
private, religious and secular sites that declare or are expressive of the
values or ethos of the people who built them.
These sites also allow us a glimpse into the everyday. Each
place is a repository, a landscape containing an epic story that has involved
whole communities. The experience is sometimes told through the memorialising
of remarkable individuals.
Titled Structures of Dominion & Democracy,
the exhibition traverses the distinct eras in our history. Instead of the word
‘Baasskap’, Goldblatt refers to the era of inequality as Dominion (see artist’s
statement, below). Whereas recent exhibitions of the series have concentrated
on the period after the fall of apartheid, the exhibition at KZNSA contains
images dating back as far as 1963.
The chronology of this exhibition begins on the Day of the
Covenant where, on December 16, 1963, Goldblatt photographed the dominating
Voortrekker Monument with a replica of a Zulu hut at its feet. In the
photograph a white child stoops to peer inside the hut, watched over by a
supposedly caring adult. As Goldblatt has noted, “This day commemorated the vow
taken by the Voortrekkers before the Battle of Blood River, that if God gave
them victory over the Zulus, they would always keep this as a day of
thanksgiving.” The photograph, then, is a study of dominance across cultures, and
generations.
The colonialist narrative of the Structures
series presented at the KZNSA by Goldblatt begins, historically, with his 1993
image of the deceptively picturesque remnants of a wild almond hedge planted in
1660 to keep the indigenous Khoikhoi out of the first European settlement in
South Africa. Other images, taken throughout the 1970s and 1980s, show the
human cost of the turbulence of the times as people of colour were forcibly
removed from their homes and shops. Elsewhere workers were housed in conditions
of impoverishment; and the contrast between the monumental and the shameful
shows the inherent contradiction of the apartheid ideology.
Of his images taken after the fall of apartheid, Goldblatt
has said: “South Africans are familiar with the period of apartheid, but they
are not very familiar with looking at what is emerging now.” Memorials to the
fallen, and public art works, show the resolution and reconciliation that
resulted. But the connotative landscape of Marikana where, in 2012, South
African Police shot striking miners of the Lonro Platinum Mines shows the
ever-jagged, severe edges at the extremity of the South African experience.
By looking at transforming spaces, David Goldblatt’s Structures
of Dominion & Democracy offers a way of understanding the
transformation of a people.
Curated by Peter McKenzie for the KZNSA’s Social Art 2014/15
Programme, the exhibition runs until April 19. The KZNSA Gallery is situated at 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, in Durban. More information
on 031 277 1703, fax 031 201 8051 or cell 082 220 0368 or visit www.kznsagallery.co.za
Posts
