“Africa comes to Venice”

George Mahashe

I could not resist using the cliché “Africa comes to Venice”, as if there is such a thing as Africa. Sean O’Toole was right to observe that the 56th Venice Biennale was not an African biennale. In his review "Africa from Afar", O’Toole points to the relative lack of artists from the continent. This is a significant observation, especially because most people had expected an African biennale, as for the first time in the biennale’s history its artistic director is of African descent – black, a diasporic African intellectual, or whatever other qualifications one would draw on to label someone “African”.

It is true that curator Okwui Enwezor was not concerned with – or managed to bypass or resist – being drawn into provincial games, such as trying to represent Africa (and its art) “authentically”, which he had previously dealt with at the second Johannesburg Biennale. Enwezor instead settled on presenting “The State of Things”, as he puts it in the essay of the same name which introduces the catalogue to the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale show titled “All the World’s Futures”. 

Distinguishing, rather surgically, between the work and obligations of the artist and art, with those of an exhibition, Enwezor positions thinkers, artists and their works in relation to the world they inhabit. He questions what they bring to the consideration of the human condition and the resulting interminable debates. In all, the exhibition concerns itself with harnessing the imaginative and critical agencies associated with artists and thinkers in the process of making meaning – a preoccupation he identifies with contemporary society. With this disciplined focus, Enwezor manages to stake out the position Africa and its diaspora currently holds within the wider economy and politics of the art world, and its relation to the wider world. 

The South African pavilion is maturing and I look forward to it becoming more focused in future. I was surprised that I took to Brett Murray’s piece “Triumph”, which goes to the heart of South Africa’s personality. I had always seen his work as petty liberal anti-ANC art that uses freedom of speech just to make fun of black people. In this piece the caricature, of both white and black, seems to me to reveal a personality rather than making fun of an actual person. 

Among my favourites this year was the Slovenian pavilion at the Arsenale, whose architectural spirit inspired me to want to build structures. The exhibition “Slip of the Tongue”, curated by artist Danh Vo at the Punta della Dogana, was an eye-opener for the potential and dynamics of the artist as curator or, more specifically, curation as an artistic medium. John Akomfrah’s presentation “Vertigo Sea” takes my respect for the affective strategy of art as tautology to another level, and it was also a pleasure to see it within the context of other masters such as Chris Marker and Isaac Julien. Must-sees that I was unable to get to were “Secret Powers” at the New Zealand pavilion and the Zimbabwean pavilion.

Finally, it was a pleasure to be reminded of the contingent and precarious nature of some performance art. While documenting Athi-Patra Ruga’s performance “Future White Woman of Azania”, I witnessed how the dressing room dynamics in a busy alleyway around the corner from the intended venue (Bauer Hotel) rubbed up against and puzzled the locals passing through on their way home, and the visiting art crowd en route to the congested venue, where the original guest list had miraculously vanished.

Here are some hashtags that you can explore to discover more: #alltheworld’sfutures; #southafricanpavilion; #veniceart2015; #venicebiennale; #venicebiennale2015; #labiennale.