Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters.

Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters

Johannesburg Art Gallery

May 13-August 19, 2007

Apartheid may have been toppled, but it continues to influence popular thought and actions throughout South Africa. And how could it be otherwise, given a system that micromanaged everyday interactions as well as exactingly prescribed the spatial, economic, and political distribution of people, resources, and privileges? The challenge for today's curators is to ferret out residual traces of ideological belief stubbornly embedded within museum practice and to devise fresh means of evaluating and displaying art work and material culture. Objects produced by Africans are freighted with layer upon layer of presuppositions--beginning with tribal classifications and binary designations such as "traditional" and "contemporary" "Dungamanzi/ Stirring Waters," highlighting the art of the Vatsonga and Machangani (commonly referred to as Tsonga and Shangaan), confronted these challenges head-on (Fig. 1).

The inventiveness of this project was evident from the outset, with a team that represented interests and aptitudes that oftentimes collide, but in this instance complemented one another: Nessa Leibhammer, curator of traditional southern African art at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), joined with co-curators Natalie Knight (a dealer and collector) and Billy Makhubele (an artist and collector) to present items endowed with aesthetic allure, mystical power, and virtuoso craftsmanship. They also interviewed creators and owners of many of the objects on display regarding their use and significance, thereby enabling attributions to be drawn to specific makers and bringing community voices into the dialogue to an unprecedented extent. (1) This injected life into items that are routinely left inert, anonymous, and mute within a museum setting.

The title "Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters" embodies multiple meanings. Dunga Manzi is the name of an early diviner who returns as an ancestral spirit to possess and guide contemporary diviners; "stirring water" is the English translation. Moreover, an explicit goal of this endeavor was to "stir the waters" in the colloquial sense, that is, shake up accepted beliefs about southern African art practice and dispel negative perceptions of it. Detractors have commonly viewed such work as "primitive," thereby debasing the sophistication of its design and execution. Others associate it with witchcraft or dismiss it as irrelevant to their modern-day lives. And all too often, even those who appreciate this material have misjudged it as being static and repetitive, when in fact it is dynamic and syncretic.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

"Dungamanzi" is the most recent in a series of exhibitions JAG has organized highlighting traditional items, including "Art and Ambiguity" (a broad survey of art of the region, 1991) and "Evocations of the Child" (an in-depth examination of one category of objects, fertility figures, 1998). Taken as a whole, the intent has been to increase exposure to traditional art and expand understanding of it by the public as well as by scholars.

The exhibition contained four sections. The first featured nineteenth and early twentieth century sculpted wooden objects such as staffs, snuff containers, and a stunning display of headrests. The second part included items associated with sangomas (diviner/healers) and inyangas (herbalists) who continue to use this traditional material in trancing and healing at the command of the ancestors: xiphandzi (tree branches believed to house ancestral spirits, from which beaded medicine horns and gourds dangled; Fig. 2), n'wana (cylindrical child figures), siyandhana (beaded ceremonial cloths), and items used for divination or "throwing the bones" (shells, dice, animal teeth and bones, etc.). The family of Billy Makhubele dominated the next section: he narrated his Shangaan ancestral story and described the function of various articles via a video, (2) complemented by a display of mineka (beaded fabric used as a wraparound skirt or draped about the shoulder). The fourth section, wood carvings by acclaimed artists such as Jackson Hlung wane and Philip Rikhotso, rounded out "Dungamanzi."

The appeal of this exhibition was heightened by the relative lack of barriers separating visitors from the displays: the curators deliberately struck a balance between allowing people to come as close as possible without putting the material at risk (Fig. 3). This meant that in many instances one could examine the intricacy of headwork dose-up, circle and scrutinize sculptures from every angle, and relish the textures and features of generally inaccessible sanctified garments. The rationale was that many of these things are highly personal in nature, used close to the body, and thus their tactility deserved to be in the open, plainly visible. Many of the objects were ones that people who uphold traditional beliefs would be fearful to touch; anyone who came too close, however, had to answer to a dedicated security guard. (As a curious postscript to life in the post-apartheid era, Billy Makhubele has diversified his activities and entered the lucrative private security market; his company furnished these sentries, and because they were also prepared to inform visitors about their culture they became, in essence, "security guides.")

Some of the objects the curators showcased were particularly memorable. A trio of towering vanyankwavi (sangomas' child figures; Fig. 4)--which, at approximately two feet in height, are easily triple the standard height of n'wana--became literal stand-outs in the exhibition. Their inflated dimensions rendered them as uncanny as anything that defies our normative expectations of scale. And as surrogate children, they were as enthralling as they were disquieting. A collection of fourteen large medicinal calabashes, elaborately beaded and capped with expressively carved human faces (Fig. 5) formed a comprehensive, archaic apothecary which is rarely displayed in public. Row upon row of headrests was mounted against one wall, generating a visual rhythm that harmonized stylistic similarities and differences, thus becoming a semaphore of aesthetic and spiritual meaning. A set of colorfully beaded mineka created by the Makhubeles highlighted the contemporary history of South Africa, commemorating such milestones as the 1976 Soweto uprising and the first egalitarian election in 1994.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Leibhammer astutely notes, "The old things were contemporary in their own day" (3) And these mineka exemplify the continual evolution of "traditional" forms of expression, in this case from abstract designs and symbols into descriptive narratives. Billy Makhubele maintains an archive of pictures and articles that record South Africa's transition to democracy and racial equity. These form the basis for what Natalie Knight appraises as "a creative synthesis of current events and traditional materials" in the catalogue accompanying this exhibition. (4) But art historian Anitra Nettleton problematizes this by noting that what we now judge to be historically conventional raw materials were all imported from outside the country. What is more, this "traditional attire" as we know it only developed in the 1920s-30s. (5)

Such research significantly enhanced one's appreciation of the displays. Both Leibhammer and Nettleton clarify how ethnic taxonomies originated beyond the groups themselves: the needs and interests of missionaries, industrial and political leaders, scientists, and art historians froze what had often been fluid and inchoate associations and affinities into set identities with which--for better or worse--South Africans continue to struggle. Leibhammer cites recent scholarship which asserts that of all the local ethnic categories, the Tsonga were the least solidified by political organization or geographical boundaries, generating disparities which may have deterred researchers from closely examining their material culture in the past.

Artist and collector Karel Nel argues that the Shangaan have demonstrated a distinctive sub-style, characterized by "a kind of wild hybridity" and an "off-centeredness" atypical for this region. (6) And Nettleton describes an assimilation of techniques and patterns from various other peoples and "a mastery of the notion of 'symmetrical but interestingly not so'" in their work. (7)

The material making up "Dungamanzi" was, therefore, visually arresting, playfully eclectic, and emphatically not a hackneyed reiteration of inventories of items commonly displayed. The curatorial team propelled this relatively unfamiliar work into public awareness, presenting it in a fashion that was both aesthetically satisfying and thought provoking. In so doing, they have thrown down the gauntlet to other museum professionals to match their intellectual thoroughness and sensitive and intuitive handling of so-called traditional objects. Therein rests the recent success and future legacy of "Dungamanzi."

"Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters" is touring South Africa; venues in 2008 included the South African National Gallery (Cape Town) and the Oliewenhuis Museum (Bloemfontein). A catalogue is also available: Dungamanzi/ Stirring Waters: Tsonga and Shangaan Art from Southern Africa, ed. Nessa Leibhammer (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2007, 227 pp., $40).

Notes

(1) Community outreach also included training and empowerment workshops and teacher education, making use of objects in the exhibition as instructional material.

(2) The videos that played in the gallery were also sold as a DVD.

(3) From an interview conducted by the author in Johannesburg, August 16, 2007. During much of its run, "Dungamanzi" appeared jointly with "Africa Remix," the largest museum exhibition of contemporary African art work ever assembled. Their co-presence amplified issues regarding what can be considered "traditional" and "contemporary" within African art practice.

(4) In Nessa Leibhammer (ed.), Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters: Tsonga and Shangaan Art from Southern Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2007), p. 73.

(5) Ibid., pp. 82, 98.

(6) Ibid., pp. 165, 167.

(7) Ibid., p. 84.

STEVEN C. DUBIN is Professor of Arts Administration, Teachers College, Columbia University. His most recent book is Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006). [e-mail]