What “global art” and current (re)turns fail to see: A modest counter-narrative of “not-another-biennial”

What is the scope of “global art” and who drives its framing within the current climate of ‘corporate globalization’ (Demos 2009:7, emphasis in original)? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does “global art”, including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of “new art worlds”2 in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term “global art” is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion. In this article I analyse the current discourse of “global art” as articulated in The global contemporary and the rise of new art worlds (Belting, Buddensieg & Weibel 2013), focusing on its origin, transcription, mapping, consumption and ultimately, I suggest, its emergence as a function of privilege. Challenging the charting of supposedly new art regions (Belting et al. 2013:100), which “writes-out” local narratives and counter-narratives, I argue for a logic of subtraction in place of a logic of addition. While the latter triumphantly implies that “new” art worlds have been added to the dominant core, the former is useful to a geopolitical perspective that strips away normative vision and actively seeks that which people often fail to see. In this paper I analyse the work of CAPE Africa Platform in South Africa, which, while briefly and erroneously used as “evidence” of biennialisation and global expansion in The global contemporary, was locally referred to as “not-another-biennial”. Discussing what some see as the shortcomings of the Cape 07 and Cape 09 exhibitions, I propose a reconsideration of measures of “success” and “failure”, suggesting that an embrace of “failure” can enable new ways of seeing the privilege of the contemporary art world. It is only when blanks, failures and things presumed not to exist are carefully regarded, that the goal of achieving mutually shared art on a global scale might become possible. Only then does it become apparent that the global south can have a certain edge over what is viewed as the prevailing art world

Editorial: Blind spots: Trickery and the ‘opaque stickiness’ of seeing

In a flash the spot will disappear, and in its place – and this is the interesting thing – there is nothing … According to experimental psychology, the eye does not fill in the blind spot, but tricks us into thinking that it has been filled … the blind spot is pure absence of vision, and cannot be experienced at all … The blind spot … is an invisible absence: an absence whose invisibility is itself invisible (Elkins 1996:170)

Igniting public space at the Chale Wote street art festival in Accra:

For the past eight years at the end of every August the James Town suburb of Ghana’s capital Accra has been taken over by the Chale Wote street art festival. During the festival, thousands of people, including local celebrities, artists, musicians, boxers and everyday revellers, move up and down the streets mostly by foot and at times on roller skates or unicycles

David Kolaone fought for the right to define himself and his art:

Dr David Nthubu Koloane, who was born in South Africa in 1938, was an extraordinary pioneer in the visual arts who fiercely defied any form of categorisation. As an artist, teacher, mentor, curator, arts administrator and author, he fought for the human right to define oneself and to determine one’s own future

Capturing the Soweto Uprising: South Africa’s most iconic photograph lives on

Sam Nzima, the photographer who captured the iconic image of the 1976 Soweto Uprising passed awayon May 12, 2018. The photograph was one of six frames showing Mbuyisa Makhubu carrying 12-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police, and Hector’s sister, Antionette Pieterson (now Sithole) running alongside

Installation view: Chale Wote Festival 2018

The Chale Wote festival opened on the Day of Re-Membering (20 August), when the Nai Priest poured libations at Brazil House in order to invoke the ancestral spirits. Core events took place on the streets and at various public spaces in James Town from 25 – 26 August. A number of artists including Kiffouly Youchaou, Kresiah Mukwazhi, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Charlotte Brathwaite, Percy Nii Nortey and the Ubulungiswa/Justice collective created works inside Ussher Fort and James Fort, which were built as slave forts by the Dutch and the British

Installation view: Chale Wote Festival 2018

The Chale Wote festival opened on the Day of Re-Membering (20 August), when the Nai Priest poured libations at Brazil House in order to invoke the ancestral spirits. Core events took place on the streets and at various public spaces in James Town from 25 – 26 August. A number of artists including Kiffouly Youchaou, Kresiah Mukwazhi, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Charlotte Brathwaite, Percy Nii Nortey and the Ubulungiswa/Justice collective created works inside Ussher Fort and James Fort, which were built as slave forts by the Dutch and the British

Rise and fall of apartheid: photography and the bureaucracy of everyday life

The exhibition catalogue Rise and Fall of Apartheid is a valuable collection of photographic images that create, according to Enwezor, “a critical visualization and interrogation of […] [apartheid’s] normative symbols, signs and representation” (18). The catalogue focuses on African subjects as “agents of their own emancipation” (18), and contextualises South Africa’s anticipation of the end of apartheid within broader global changes in the late 1980s. Essays by Okwui Enwezor, Michael Godby, Achille Mbembe, Darren Newbury, Colin Richards, Patricia Hayes, Andries Walter Olifant, Rory Bester and Khwezi Gule are included in the catalogue, and are interspersed between photographic images that are grouped in chronological clusters: 1948–1959; 1960–1969; 1970–1979; 1980–1989; and 1990–1995

AmaNdebele, Peter Magubane and Sandra Klopper: book review

AmaNdebele is a very attractive book with beautifully reproduced colour photographs taken by the renowned photographer Peter Magubane, who secured enormous credibility as a photojournalist during the violent years of apartheid. While some South African readers who browse through the glossy portrayals of ceremonial attire and homestead decorations may recall Magubane's earlier books such as Soweto speaks (1981) and Soweto: The fruit of fear (1986) in which the photographer laid bare the ferocious violence of apartheid rule, many readers will skip over the nuances of both Magubane's disrupted career and the contentious relationship between the Ndebele people and the South African apartheid government

Pushing against ‘China-Africa’ slowly, and with small stories:

the new focus on african arts and critical thought