UCT MFA Graduate Vincent Bezuidenhout at Goethe on Main, JHB, 7-29 July 2016
UCT MFA Graduate Vincent Bezuidenhout will exhibit at Goethe on Main in Johannesburg on the 7-29 July 2016
FAIL DEADLY
‘Fail Deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack. The term fail-deadly was coined as a contrast to fail-safe’.
Fail Deadly is an ongoing project set against the history of South Africa’s clandestine nuclear weapons program during apartheid. In the 1970 and 80’s South Africa built six atom bombs in complete secrecy. As the apartheid system crumbled the program was swiftly disbanded before the advent of democracy.
This project incorporates and references elements of photojournalism, image appropriation and landscape photography, but reflects critically on the limitations of all these strategies in terms of their use in artistic practice. Utilizing the aesthetics of research instead of its results, I construct my own narrative that allows me to expand on and re-contextualize the various facts and theories surrounding this history.
Referencing elements of surveillance and power, and by extension violence and fear, and by examining the act of censorship of both past and present histories in South Africa, I use absence, omission and cover-ups to convey these ideas that in turn allows me to reflect on my own identity within the South African historiography.
Bio
Vincent Bezuidenhout is a visual artist born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He attended the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, where he obtained a Masters Degree in Fine Art with distinction.
Bezuidenhout was the recipient of the 2010/11 Tierney Fellowship, which led to his first solo exhibition Separate Amenities at Whatiftheworld Gallery in 2011. In 2013 Bezuidenhout was awarded a bursary to attend the Photoglobal Programme at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Bezuidenhout lives and works between Cape Town and New York City.