Thami Mnyele and the Medu Ensemble Retrospective
Venue: JAG - Johannesburg Art Gallery
Date: Until March 2009
Thami Mnyele and the Medu Ensemble Retrospective is a monumental reminder of how different things were less than 30 years ago, a testament to how far we've come and a tribute to how we got here.
Thami Mnyele and his comrades in art and arms were visionaries who saw beyond the confines of apartheid, and imagined a more viable future. The legendary South African activist honoured here, who was killed in 1985 during an SADP raid, is best remembered for the marks he made. A graphic artist, inspired by the likes of Goya, Dali, and Dumile Feni, Mnyele sought to change his world by graphically depicting it. His prolific output finds prominent place, showing how his early interest in Surrealism and Expressionism evolved into an active art of resistance.
Together with his mentor and fellow exile, playwright Wally Serote, they founded the Medu Art Ensemble in Botswana in 1979. For them art was a form of radical cultural work, which required a synergy between individual expression and collective vision.
Before 1976, white artists in South Africa were notoriously neck-deep in the sand and knee-high in the splats and abstractions of Formalism. It was the likes of Mnyele and numerous other artists that were not so much ahead of their time, as doggedly pushing time forward.
The outcome of their collective effort is engrained now on the consciousness of an entire nation. This show is confirmation, in the face of ongoing ignorance and skepticism, of the visionary and revolutionary power of art. The transformation of society has long been accompanied and catalysed by the arts. It is a particularly African imperative, this integration of art with life, and its assistance in the evolution of culture. Traditionally this was done by means of an oral tradition, which includes ritualised music, poetry, art and performance. In recognition of these roots, the gallery has put together a multi-media fest.
Original posters, drawings, music, poetry, dvds of performances and key interviews, headphones playing jazz by Jonas Gwangwa and Steve Dyer are supplemented with photographs, pamphlets and newspaper clippings that re-create the latter-day cultural milieu. Installations include wallpaper printed with the names of repressive and ridiculous acts passed off as law, minutes of meetings complete with doodles and even a copy of Thami Mnyele's second marriage certificate. The gallery spared no effort to convey, in every detail, the magnitude and scale of this international endeavour.
The interactive and integrative nature of this show does justice to each of the art disciplines, and finds a way of threading past into present. For example, a recording of Wally Serote's elegiac poem for Mnyele is read by the treacle-voiced Lebo Mashile, a contemporary poet and activist. As an example of one who continues to do the good work, her name popped up more than once during the three-day symposium that was held early in December, providing a platform for reflection, revision and debate, and a possible springboard for related new directions and initiatives.
The panel of (ex-) Medu members who came to share their memories and hopes, reflected on the special energy that drove their crusade, and provided personal insights into key events such as the 1982 Culture and Resistance Festival held in Gaberone. It was suggested that remembering is not an end in itself, but that it should spark appropriate action here and now.
Sue Williamson, resistance artist and speaker at the symposium, explained what that early training sought to achieve, namely to produce practising black artists, and how it was superceded by a mass effort at creative problem-solving, using whatever was at hand, T-shirts, parks, graffiti, theatre and music to express their resistance. It remains the responsibility of artists, all of them - all of us - to identify social problems and find creative solutions.
Medu Art Ensemble is proof that a vision, while always grounded in a particular context, can transcend race and nation. Whatever their individual differences, they became a collective bound by an overriding common goal - a free, equal South Africa.
Medu came to stand for international and continental solidarity - funded and supported by Sweden and nurtured in Botswana, exiles from South Africa and elsewhere gathered to form a unified front. And while patriotic and nationalistic issues were at stake, Medu is a shining precursor of the multicultural family.
If resistance art is not to become trivialised, it is imperative that this exhibition be viewed by as many as possible. Teachers, take your students to see this exhibition, parents take your children!
This is history requesting your attention. The Johannesburg Art Gallery and curator Clive Kellner have done a magnificent job of making this accessible, educational and enjoyable for all, and the ambitiousness of the project is matched only by its success.