Galleries are repositories of contemporary social memory, identity, and spiritual continuity. Although galleries have been traditionally enclaves of white privileged artists, and some of those artists of colour deemed palatable by the art market speculators, their character is finally facing transformation from outside.
Activating infrastructural change within under-resourced spaces like South Africa’s townships means a commitment to reshaping the structures of cultural institutions, where galleries and other heritage sites must advocate for reparative methodologies in the face of dispossession.
But how can artists explore and contend with the interplay between contemporary democratic erosion of free expression and post-truth aesthetics, while presenting these “unpolished” narratives through which not only objects but also emotions, memories, and ideas circulate?
Artist Lesego Moncho has pioneered the trend of bringing overlooked art to the people by establishing The Lesego MONCHO Art Gallery in Taung, a historic and politically important township on the outskirt of the North West Province, a town that is home to a rich legacy of artistic and literary activism.
His work as a gallerist is born from a desire for reciprocity of living artists, not to reduce artists to mere producers of objects, and as artist in his own right, Lesego recognises the hidden burdens of artistic labor, the stress and lack of financial support that often derails many artistic practices as they erode attentiveness and dedication.
The monumental work that goes into establishing an art gallery in a township must take resilience and dedication, that is why it was essential to engage the galleries on his theoretical approach to curating exhibition for audiences that were excluded from “cultural appreciation”.
When the art world is shifting with contemporary capitalist rivalries, the military-industrial machinery continues ravaging various symbols of heritage, artworks and painting will disappear from public access, and this will affect places where conditions for scarcity are entrenched into the social super-structure.
Black communities fall within the strata of social demographics with less access to cultural institutions, and this absence can and has create a form of an avoidance of the preservation of such institution, especially by people of colour.
Although there is a prolific history of resistance artists who created spaces for artistic expression within the confines of politically charged and monitored townships, South Africa has observed a decline of such collectives and movements.
A large number of these art collectives and hubs are now based in high end suburbs of metropolitan cities, where the creative market is lucrative and the purchasing power and palates for new art is further growing.
Contemporary galleries and artists alike are now embroiled in postcolonial and neocolonial dynamics that challenge authority and ownership, and for galleries like the Lesego MONCHO Art Gallery, restitution and decolonisation debates require rethinking collection policies and custodianship.
For artists from marginalised or formerly colonised social groups, galleries must move from ownership to stewardship, from possession to relation; this way artists will not imagine galleries as abstract machines of validation and instant monetary gratification.
These galleries must confront the ever morphing yet constant exclusion of these artists from dominant categories of value while avoiding the risk of being instruments appropriated by traditional cultural institutions seeking diversity optics.
And in a cultural climate where both galleries and artists adapt to chronic instability by normalising self-exploitation, and exhaustion, galleries like MONCHO Art Gallery represent a change of guard.
When new artists often slip into tokenism when they cultivate their social, gender, or cultural background for personal success, galleries like MONCHO can either exploit that trait or reimagine it.
And the Lesego MONCHO Art Gallery, it appears is determined to keep relations between artists open and transparent, ensuring that collaboration remains a civic practice rather than a bureaucratic procedure.
This art haven is a testament that unless artists orient their methods towards self-sustained expression and making accessibility to a broad audience a priority, they need robust ideas and the willingness to face the hardships of navigating an unequal terrain of the global art world.
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Images from the artist's online profiles.
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