THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF DREAMS. A group show. At Stevenson Johannesburg and Cape Town and blank projects until August 27. DANNY SHORKEND reviews
BASED on K. Sello Duiker’s novel, The Quiet Violence of Dreams, this exhibition, developed by Joost Bosland in conversation with Moshekwa Langa, is a meditation on the “other side” of Cape Town city life.
One will find then various artistic interpretations on the themes touched on in the book. Conflicting emotions are sure to arise and ones thinking may subside into a confused state, only to resurface with the notion that light and its absent are interincluded. Duiker even goes so far as to say that darkness can be found in light. Whether one agrees or not, the exhibition is sure to ignite or motivate a reaction of sorts. In this sense, at least one positive attribute of art is accomplished: to refuse to simply be a pretty picture, an escape from the realities “out there”. Shock tactics somehow have not found to be outdated and sterile.
Aesthetically one sees the gleam and glitter of Evan Ifekoya’s ritual-like installation; Penny Siopis’s crying and spreading pinks and purples; Jane Alexander’s thought-stirring installation; Portia Zvavahera’s sense of freedom in the loving embrace of lovers… But what can it all mean? There seems in these works and numerous others a sense of pain and self-obsession.
Just as the main character in the book, Tshepo is so often a victim as much as he has moulded himself, so one perhaps will find a deep resignation to suffer and to ignore boundaries. In this, there is the possibility of darkness, even violence.
Is the book cathartic? Does the exhibition release fear, pain and guilt? One might be speaking as it applies to individuals, but also groups and communities.
In this sense, one needs to quite seriously ask, in keeping with the tradition of moralist critics, in what sense this is edifying. I think the answer perhaps lies in the fact that fear and oppression is caused itself by fear and oppression and by allowing “silence”, an “other” to the fore, equilibrium is established.
There is insanity in sanity just as there is sanity in insanity. The exhibition therefore invites complexity and philosophical depth.
However there is a cost, a price for this awareness. For in knowing, one becomes one with that which is known. In the process, one is changed. And indeed the power of this show is that it does (together with the novel) move one and provoke and challenge. This is good, especially in society that perhaps does not offer as much creative expression – citizens reduced to numbers and wage-labourers.
Yet who is the victim? Can one only be a victim if one accents to that regardless of what actually transpires? Yet one is also saddened. Saddened by the fact that one can become a victim to an energy that one cannot control. That as is perennially the case, we are all at times motivated by life denying acts.
Free will is given, but that also means the seeming lack of divine intervention as one plods along ones life trajectory. However, there is hope. Consider Unathi Sigenu’s, what I call running man series that is strategically placed at different points of the show.
It suggests that all will end well, that we have much energy to accomplish the task, the task of celebrating life by thoughts and actions that we would want our children to know.
Essentially, I am saying that this exhibition, may in fact – contra to its apparent and surface “other” – reorientate the viewer to recognise the “other” within him or herself and in that mere act find unity abounds, without necessarily undoing the viewers centre of being.
At the same time, as Glenn Ligon’s (at Blank projects) neon Bruise/blues suggests, there is always the possibility of dual meanings – at once a promise of spiritual delight – the ethereal blue – and yet potentially dangerous, resulting in bruises.
The sound-word play is thus a portend to the inability to stabilise meaning, the constant shift from one thing to another as there is no actual presence in language and life proper… only a network of differences.
I would recommend this show, though one of the more contentious exhibitions of the last year or so. I guess that’s a good thing.
Stevenson Gallery is at Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock. Blank Projects is at 113 Sir Lowry Rd, Woodstock.
l 021 462 1500, [email protected], www.stevenson.info Blank Projects:021 462 4276