Taste: A Conversation between Makers and Users
Why do two objects that hold the same function appear so different? In the third of his Circa posts, curatorial intern Taylor Hunkins explains....
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Dismembering the Past: A Provocative New Acquisition That Re-Members History
| Feb 17, 2021With the advent of global protests (such as Black Lives Matter, EndSARS, and Rhodes Must Fall) urgently calling for social justice and the end of systemic racism, violence against Black bodies, and police brutality, museums, like other institutions, have been called upon to reflect on their own institutional histories and grapple with the role they have played in perpetuating stereotypes and inequities—both in gallery/collections representation and within their administration.
This decolonizing agenda includes transparency, partnerships and collaborations with community stakeholders, the hiring of more women and persons of color, extensive provenance research, and greater circulation of objects globally. Another critical aspect includes the overturning of one-dimensional historical narratives that have for too long obfuscated everyday realities and the violence at play in colonial and imperial histories. One way museums can do this is by introducing powerful new works to our communities and stakeholders that shed light on histories some would prefer left untold but that in telling can return agency to those who have been systematically repressed.
William Kentridge, still from video installation KABOOM!, 2018, three-channel HD film installation, model stage, paper props, found objects, and three mini-projectors with stands, dimensions variable, Purchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), photo courtesy William Kentridge and Goodman Gallery
William Kentridge, video installation KABOOM!, 2018, three-channel HD film installation, model stage, paper props, found objects, and three mini-projectors with stands, dimensions variable, Purchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), photo courtesy William Kentridge and Goodman Gallery
Documentary, Restitution, Reparation
Memory and knowledge, especially local and cultural, are essential to constructing identity. As writers like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Edouard Glissant articulate, there has been a “dismembering” of Africa through the transatlantic slave trade and the processes of colonialism. Artists like Kentridge are countering this disarticulation with a new kind of re-membering that turns to history to shine a light on little-known or misrepresented chapters, to critique the past, and to highlight topics that remain relevant and urgent today. The mediums of film and video in particular, widely associated with the documentary genre, are frequently used to call into question the relationship between reality and representation.
KABOOM! relates to the documentary and restitution movements of post-apartheid South Africa and African responses to the paradoxes of postcolonialisms. As Kentridge puts it, “By the paradox I mean the contradictory relationships towards Europe—the desire of Africans to be part of Europe, to share in the wealth and the richness of Europe, and wanting to resist Europe and its depredations.” These stories are crucial to tell and speak to themes relating to the construction and deconstruction of time, memory, geography, and history that are similarly being called into question in the United States. As Kentridge notes, the process of recording history involves constructing from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a provisional understanding of the past. Dismembering and reordering are thus also an essential activity of his studio practice:
“This dismantling is not simply a technique or strategy, but also can be a revelation of the instability of knowledge in the world, its provisionality. The collage and the ordering becomes the subject itself.”
In telling even fractured narratives, we reignite memory and honor those who have been pushed to the margins.
Stay tuned. KABOOM! will make its debut as part of the NCMA’s museum-wide, cross-cultural reinstallation in 2022.
William Kentridge, still from video installation KABOOM!, 2018, three-channel HD film installation, model stage, paper props, found objects, and three mini-projectors with stands, dimensions variable, Purchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), photo courtesy William Kentridge and Goodman Gallery
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