Annamarie Lategan

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

Witnesses: What does the furniture see? 

The home is a sentimental space that suggests comfort. It creates an environment of freedom, actions and words. However, even within this space of perceived safety, one might be 'watched.' Throughout my fourth year, I have developed a theory that furniture becomes fictitious 'witnesses' of all people’s actions and conversations within one's home. Furniture can take on the presence of the people who interact with it. By analysing the theory of Animism, I argue that furniture can be considered a non-human 'person' because of this presence and the relationship between the furniture and a person. Therefore, becoming a ‘witness’.

However, I began to wonder what the furniture 'witnessed within Afrikaans households, especially within my home. I enacted ‘violence’ upon the furniture I collected through the process of ripping and cutting the furniture apart and then mending it back together. This 'violence' also alludes to the racial and sexual violence that the furniture witnessed within Afrikaans nationalism. In my artworks The Dining Table and The Chairs, I comment on how this violence would subtly infiltrate into otherwise innocuous dinner conversations, causing uncomfortable situations and conversations. The Dining Table has embodied the uncomfortable feelings and took the shape of a dining table that is equally uncomfortable and hard to reach. While The Chairs started to re-enact all the debates around Queer and interracial relationships, by taking on positions that can be seen as sexual or maybe even violent.

All the furniture in my artworks are 'witnesses,' but while The Dining Table and The Chairs embody and re-enact everything they "witness," Mirrors silently survey and judge what they are 'witnessing'. Mirrors create an effect of watching and being watched, by surveying and looming over everything and everyone in the exhibition. This, in turn, makes the viewers aware that they, as human beings, are witnessed by the furniture.