Innovative Women: Who’s Art Is It Anyway?

South Africa Mon 22-03-2010

Innovative Women: Who’s Art Is It Anyway?
By Andile Magengele

“I have always maintained that the Department of Arts (DAC) is, in a number of respects, the custodian of S.A.’s collective national memory and the chronicler of its current evolution ... what better ways to chronicle and capture our national memory for posterity if not by various creative media.” ~ Dr Pallo Jordaan, South African Ambassador to the United Nations and former Minister of Arts and Culture.

Cultures are not static. In order for them to keep fresh, stay relevant and indeed help move civilisations forward, societies have allowed, and must foster, free creativity and open dialogue.

South African minister for arts and culture, Lulu Xingwana at a past function.

The arts encourage different media and scholarship not just to represent and reinterpret, but push the boundaries of, culture.

Who protects the arts today, both during the creative process and afterwards? Private and corporate patronage is by its very nature restrictive.

As Dr. Jordaan states, government must act as an impartial guardian and historian for the masses. And indeed section 16 of the South African Constitution states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media; freedom to receive and impart information or idea; freedom of artistic creativity; academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.”

South Africa as also a signatory of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which promotes global artistic freedom as a basis for a healthy democracy.

Imagine, then, the surprise at the current arts and culture minister Lulu Xingwana’s reaction at the 'Innovative Women' exhibition her department had funded and she had been invited to open at the Constitutional Hill in August 2009.

Xingwana reportedly called the images of Zanele Muholi, an acclaimed photographer whose oeuvre touches on women’s issues, and Nandipha Mntambo’s Self-Rape “pornographic”. (“The work in question is actually The Rape of Europa and despite its title does not depict a rape).

Rather, says Mntambo, the piece plays on historical, artistic and mythological references. It is based on a sketch by Pablo Picasso of a minotaur – a mythological creature who is half bull and half human – caressing a girl.

It is named after a painting by the same name by Titian, an Italian painter who was a leader in the Venetian renaissance.”

Muholi’s work depicted an intimate act between two black women. Xingwana’s utterances and walkout made her vulnerable to the media, who have called her a “homophobe” and her attitude “bigoted”.

Earlier this month, she claimed that “contrary to media reports, I was not even aware as to whether the ‘bodies’ in the images were of men or women or both for that matter. My reaction was guided by the view that these ‘artworks’ were not suitable for a family audience. I noticed that there were children as young as three-years-old in the room.”

The minister was arguably acting within her democratic right by expressing her opinion of the artists’ work, by dismissing it as not being ‘art’.

What is disturbing is the minister’s apparent ignorance of her own country and department’s policy on the freedom of artistic creativity.

Otherwise her opinion on what is art and what is not would have remained a private matter.

'Beloved' by Zanele Muholi

'Beloved' | Zanele Muholi | Photography

Unlike much of Africa where state support for the arts is non-existent, the arts enjoy limited funding from the South African government.

As is the case when public money is involved, accountability is required.

However, the minister should have taken into consideration the policy of ‘arm’s length’ as mentioned in the White Paper on Arts and Culture: “promotion without undue promulgation would be an ideal”. Yet she went on to issue a press statement calling the photographs “immoral, offensive and going against nation-building”.

In a developing country like South Africa, culture is as not just a ‘nice to have’. The DAC recognises this: “Investing in Culture is the department’s flagship programme to eradicate poverty, providing the necessary skills to enable people to assume greater responsibility for their future.”

While it may be the case that “cultural summits in South Africa have focused on whether artists have a responsibility to promote nation building, 16 years after the end of apartheid, or should be allowed to make "art for art's sake",” when in fact the two need not be mutually exclusive, the state’s role as guardian is not the same as deciding what is aesthetic or merits praise.

That should be left to the hands of the experts. When an artist produces a work, and this work is analysed by art historians and critics, and displayed in galleries, then that work is art.

As the minister of arts and culture, Xingwana should have been trained on how to view artwork within the context of a gallery and how a work is critiqued in the context of art history.

'Rape of Europa' by Nandipha Mntambo

'Rape of Europa' (2009) | Nandipha Mntambo | Photography

She should have been briefed – and prepared her speech – beforehand, to save her from being perceived as a philistine.

The minister’s response later to suspend the official who took over her responsibility of addressing the opening of the exhibition smells of a personal vendetta.

Finally, she argues that it was her obligation as a public representative to voice her concerns over the suitability of the material for minors. But should parents not be responsible for that choice?

Such high profile reaction is not new, even in the west. One is reminded of the comment by the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani in 2000, that a Chris Ofili painting of a Virgin Mary with elephant dung was sacrilegious.

He threatened to cut off the funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where the work was exhibited. He took the Museum to court and lost the case because he was violating the Museum’s right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the American First Amendment to the Constitution.

Xingwana’s reaction has given us an opportunity to open up a dialogue on art production, presentation, interpretation and distribution.

What is the relationship between freedom of artistic expression and democracy? Art will always be highly emotionally-charged because it is concerned with the most central aspect of humanity – creativity, innovation and identity – which gives it the power to provoke, inspire, unite and separate.

Cultural pluralism is a fundamental principle. Respect for such diversity and freedoms for groups and individuals will only strengthen us. Painter Bongi Bengu, who also curated Innovative Women, said she is guided by curatorial integrity and scholarship.

Women Embrace by Zanel Muholi

Women Embrace | Zanel Muholi | Photography

It is the role of the curator to provide a cognitive experience and entice the senses through the exhibition.
Bengu said: “Firstly I would like to clarify that when we conceptualized the Innovative Women exhibition together with artists, there was no intention at all to offend anybody.

That the Minister was offended by the exhibition came as a big surprise to me. My aim for the exhibition was to create a platform for dialogue, a platform for the artists to discuss issues that they hold very dear.

As an artist and curator of the exhibition, issues of women emancipation are close to my heart as someone who grew up under very trying conditions of apartheid. I feel strongly that women must have a voice.”

In tandem, the Department of Arts and Culture professes to “support women in the area of visual arts. In August 2008, it awarded female artists for excellence in this field.”

I feel that it is when we can engage in true dialogue that we will have social cohesion in our country. This incident is all the more startling because the minister could have learnt some lessons from our apartheid past and our cultural struggles which led to the assassination of artists like Thami Mnyele.

It is now sixteen years later and no censorship boards yet; but our leadership continues to haemorrhage from the impact of cultural boycott and lack of art education which has left us myopic on how to interpret or read art within the context of a gallery.

Artists have the right to express their interpretation of women as symbols of sexuality even if it is unpopular with a minister who thinks it is porn; in art-speak, it is called erotica.

But gender and even (homo)sexuality aside, the works in this exhibition illustrate one of the most important tenants of democracy – a belief in the importance of the artist to have that voice and a form of self-expression.

Maybe next time, the exhibition promotional material should carry the warning that: “the contents of this exhibition may cause shock, confusion, and anxiety”.

See other related articles below:

But Is It Art?

Zanele Muholi And Those Photos

Minister Shoots Self In Foot

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