“Unexpected Is Always Upon Us”

“Unexpected Is Always Upon Us”

“Unexpected Is Always Upon Us”

In the past weeks a variety of artists have converged in discourse around the tragic events that occurred at Marikina; the implications of a brutal police state and mercenary security companies guarding interests of the elite. There were however other tainted colloquial remarks from various spheres of society – for instance, about the victims who were not workers at mines being deemed incendiary to the massacre. Such and other remarks served to further trivialise the pivotal role of social development (over and above CSI obligations) the capitalist multi-national corporations have thusfar neglected and ignored. 

The families affected by the deaths have voiced their mourning, while the privileged mineral sector moguls whose sole aim is the depletion of the earth’s reservoirs claimed to be bullied into creating tangible change in economic conditions of the people. These artists undertook what I would term ‘the calling of social change’ head on and their collective voice has begun to send ripples on the surface of the South African political psyche.

Yasmin Nair, Writer, Academic, Activist, Commentator eloquently elucidated on the issues of Art and Society in writing that “Art has never been too far away from social justice”.  “Artists have, accurately or not, been considered the radical visionaries of society.  In recent years, the concept of art as social justice has become prominent in the non-profit and organizing worlds.  Everywhere you turn, it seems, there is a mural about community or a hip hop performance about racial harmony.  Art is no longer merely to be seen and consumed; it has now become a conscious mechanism in the resistance to neoliberalism, the intense privatization of everyday life which has brought us to this current economic disaster.”

In a previous blog, I expressed a concern about contemporary artistic representations of events and persons involved in social change; and this reclusive contemplation lead me to this artwork of Lehlohonolo Dhlamini.

A plethora of images have been proliferated onto the social moral mural, and most of these are now protected by Intellectual Property rights, belonging to the private domain of collectors and fetishists. This leave me to ask whether such “captured images” belong to the scarred social fabric at large or the monopolists of social representation who mainly rely on mainstream media for engineering such feats in the face of calamity?

But where does his compendium of depictions of Marikana’s tragedy fit within the iconoclastic milieu of images that fill our historical memory? And of those "captured bodies" (which are now property of "captors"), does his depictions border on being abstractions without a metabolic interface? What are the artist's responsibilities towards a collective social memory and its authentication versus its falsification based on perspective? These and other questions I posed to the artist in an interview that will be posted in the near future.

Philosopher Theodor Adorno (b. 1903; d. 1969) saw art as both inextricably linked to society and separate from it. This double character of art is essential to its being and it is this that gives art its unique position of being able to critique society from within whilst remaining autonomous from that same society.

Within this cauldron of memorabilia where art is both a commodity, party to the rules of exchange and bought and sold merely for profit, and something more than a commodity – what Adorno terms the ‘Absolute Commodity’, will Andries Tatane’s face grace our squares, commoditised into a brand for t-shirt designs and street names? Will a country where artistic controversy is moulded around presidential genitalia be enticed towards paying due respect to their dead?

These questions, though presently ignored, will they spark a conversation about canonising even The Man in The Green Blanket into a struggle hero? Lehlohonolo Dhlamini’s image of the memory of Marikana stands out as an initiating exercise in honouring such unknown persons. Art should therefore encapsulate a country’s culture responses during times adversity. I believe our young print-maker’s artwork will also serve as a reminder to the nation of their past, what has been sacrificed or accomplished and what they can aspire to in the present or future. It will help rouse patriotic fervour, bring new ideas and culture to light, raise questions and rewrite or reinterpret the historical events that took place at Marikana.

“Unexpected Is Always Upon Us” is a masterful and psychologically rich piece of work which I hope will eventually be an essential image for the future generations who will aspire towards newer heroes and heroines. It will encourage feelings of patriotism and national pride in our children and thus serve as object of posterity within the collective memory of South Africans and the entire world. And it is upon this definitive day of our grilled heritage, sending fumes of obesity’s dietary aftermaths into the expanse that I ask whether such an artist is essential in the characteristic context of generating new memories through art? Will his and other artists’ works enforce visibility of events and become the source of a new and distinctive kind of social commentary?


Artwork sourced from www.lehlohonolodhlamini.co.za