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DYSTOPIA
Curator:
Co-curator:
Contact: +27 12
4296255, lebekj@unisa.ac.za
Dates &
venues:
May 23 – June 30,
2009: Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria
October 8 –
November 15, 2009: Museum Africa, Johannesburg
June 10 – August
8, 2010: Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Mangaung
Participating
artists: Adelle van Zyl; Brett Murray; Celia de Villiers;
Christiaan Diedericks; Christiaan Hattingh;
Churchill Madikida; Collen Maswanganyi; Dale Yudelman; Daniel Halter; Diane Victor; Dineo Bopape; Elfriede Dreyer;
Frikkie Eksteen; Guy du Toit & Iaan Bekker; Gwenneth Miller; Jenna Burchell; Jan van der
Merwe; Johan Thom; Kai Lossgott; Kudzanai Chiurai; Lawrence Lemaoana;
Minnette Vári; Moshekwa
Langa; Nicholas Hlobo; Pieter Swanepoel; Steven
Cohen; Thando Mama; William Kentridge,
Claire Gavronsky & Rose Shakinovsky;
Zanele Muholi
CLICK
HERE FOR A CATALOGUE ON THE THREE EXHIBITIONS
Introduction Art often serves an observational, analytical and
interpretational purpose. Both art’s mimetic function and its imaginative
aspect provide powerful means by which any society can introspect,
investigate and visualise itself as a capsule of the socio-cultural and
political status quo. Within the geographical boundaries of Southern Africa, Dystopia
explores the relationship of contemporary art production to society and
ideology, and aims to unmask articulations of dystopia within this cultural
framework. A main curatorial intention with the exhibition is to express the
view that the dystopian artworks included in this exhibition and the cultural
criticism articulated therein seem to have responded to an air of crisis that
has been pervading contemporary thinking for several decades now. In
principle, dystopian texts express world views that postulate end-of-utopia,
utopia-gone-wrong and even anti-utopia, and entail responses to and a
critique of utopia. In the dystopian genre the imagination is tweaked as a
critical instrument set on deconstructing existing or potential ills,
injustices and hypocrisies in society, mainly brought on by utopian
ideologies and legacies. In dystopian texts whether real or fictive; visual
or literary stories are told about, for instance, societies and places where
the impact of the ideological blueprint of globalisation has created
diasporic cultures and nomad identities; about unjust utopian political ideas
that create social restriction, impaired mobility, repression or oppression;
or about postutopian space and loss of religious
belief and direction. It might recount posthuman
conditions as a result of the dominating influence of the technological
utopianism, evident in dysfunctional cyberrelationships
and telematic influences leading to rampant
violence, threat to self, insensitivity and indifference to critical
socio-cultural problems. Broadly speaking, Dystopia deals with the
following themes: political utopia-gone-wrong; teleology and apocalypse;
dystopian contestations of gender, race and culture; spatiality and
boundaries as postideological zones; the postindustrial city; and
technodystopia. The artworks that have been selected for the exhibition
function as palimpsests where dystopian maps have been superimposed over
utopia, but also as utopian constructions where dystopian realities have been
absorbed, negated and transcended in order to generate a new utopian
synthesis. A significant metatext in the conceptual
architecture of the exhibition is the role and use of various kinds of technologies
from low-tech to high-tech digital tools in the production of the artworks.
The objective here is to come closer to an understanding of the way in which
culture produces itself and attributes meaning to that self-production. The
appropriated technologies reflect social processes, histories and conditions
in South Africa and as such provide a kind of technological “barometer” for,
for instance, rural village settings, inner city diasporic communities and
consumer environments. The exhibition consists of a combination of recently
and newly produced work of South African artists, both emerging and
internationally acclaimed, as well as selected artworks from the University
of South Africa’s art collection. A comprehensive catalogue and an educational
programme accompany the exhibition. Dystopia is primarily funded by the National
Research Foundation of South Africa under the Key International Science
Capacity (KISC) Initiative, as well as by Unisa. |
