Curated by Ann-Marie Tully, Annemi Conradie-Chetty, Rachel Baasch and Alison Kearney, with assistance from Rina de Klerk, held at the KZNSA Gallery, Durban, 21 September- 23 October 2022
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Awonke Zidlele | Jade Bowers | Maxine Mnisi Mnisi | Jo-Ann Chan | Catharina de Klerk | Sbonelo Ndlovu | iHubo leNgabadi | Farieda Nazier | Christine Dixie | Phemo Matlhabe | Ann-Marie Tully | Derrick Njoko | Kiveshan Thumbiran | Alison Kearney | Gemma Shepherd | Rochelle Nembhard | Ande Magoso | Lee Nicole Scott | Nick Rose | Annemi Conradie-Chetty | Duma Innocent Mtimkulu | Sue Clark | Diane Victor | Jonathan van der Walt | Andre Rose | Jose D Trejo-Maya | Kim Berman | Sitidziwa Ndoya | Josie Grindrod | Marlene de Beer | Gordon Froud | Isheanesu Dondo | Landi Raubenheimer | Chris de Beer | Rat Western | Louiza Combrinck | Jessica Bothma |Micaela Scholtz | Ilené Bothma | Alexander Opper | Marisa Maré |
The ‘Romancing the Stone’ exhibition formed part of the Arts Research Kaleidoscope [ARK], a festival emerged from the partnership of the South African Visual Art Historians [SAVAH] conference & the Durban University of Technology, Faculty of Art & Design, Digifest, The ARK theme is Romancing the Stone: Lithic Ecologies & Hard Places in South African Visual Culture [Breaking Rock].
The relationship between human beings and stone as a medium, metaphor and artefact has a significant and contested history within the visual arts. We use the word in metaphors to signify impermeable ideas and hardened frameworks. We describe ideas and ideologies as set in stone when we feel that they cannot be changed or shifted. However, as Monet observed in relation to the shifting light on the Rouen Cathedral, ‘Everything changes, even stone’. A monumental observation that speaks also to the displacement or casting into shadow of the grand narratives of the art canon, that have privileged occidental views. The lithic metaphor is a broad habitus, particularly aligned with KwaZulu Natal, where much rock art and history is drawn from within and around the rock (archaeology, history, and heritage).
This lithic metaphor is the productive framework for this exhibition comprising multiple artistic strata, each engaging with the hard places in South African visual culture. The rhetoric of romancing the stone is also a warning to be vigilant of the prism of romancing, using cultural, gendered and fetishized lenses, which can obscure a clear view of new, surprising, and transitionary identities. (Text and image by Ann- Marie Tully).