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AC: In relation to the act of viewing what this seems to do is suspend or extend the ‘fantasy’. It suspends disbelief. In other words, by covering the suture it also enables a kind of voyeuristic fantasy to continue. PS: It doesn’t reveal the terms of its violent construction and that’s what’s really interesting. AC: In Exhibit Ex-Africa, for example, you’ve shown the cloth (the ‘tablier’) with, as it were, an absent centre. For those of us who have seen those photos of the casts at the Musée de L’Homme this is a very poignant image. But a lot of your work deals with the question of subjectivity (your own in particular), and sometimes this involves using symbolic items that are only really accessible to you. Perhaps the image of the cloth wrapped around its absent centre is one of these. I’ve seen the photographs that you took surreptitiously at the Musée de L’Homme. I know the absent centre that they disclose, but most viewers of Exhibit Ex-Africa won’t. So there are different levels of meaning in your work, as with many artists. There are always spaces which are not necessarily accessible and can only be appreciated through a different kind of interrogation of the work on a very personal level. And then there are other figures which are so iconic that there is no mistaking aspects of their significance, like the figure of Saartjie Baartman. Do you see the more obscure references as a problem in work which purports to be so centrally concerned with larger political issues? PS: I think things sometimes function metonymically. There’s a sense if you look at that cloth, even if you don’t know what it is, you would soon realize that it is covering something up, so to speak. This could be seen then as something ‘missing’. The cloth then, placed in close proximity as it is to the more obviously identifiable images of Saartjie Baartman, would be read through the context that her images produce. This kind of ambiguous lack is really important to me. I think it makes the viewer active in projecting meaning. I would not want my work to be seen simply as didactically political, so I would not see this degree of ambiguity as a problem in relation to the apparent political positioning of my practice. What I found interesting is when I took those photographs I felt very voyeuristic, horrified and shocked all at once. I also felt that I should see these things. It was an odd sort of defiance. I needed to see them but I was horrified nonetheless. I photographed them and I’ve had the photographs for years. AC: Those casts in the Musée de L’Homme are powerfully horrifying objects. Much of your own work has dealt with the idea of the cast, the imprint of the body’s traces. For example in the video Per Kind Permis sion: Fieldwork (Figures 5, 6, 7) you’ve used the repetitive and painful act of plastering,
DOI link for AC: In relation to the act of viewing what this seems to do is suspend or extend the ‘fantasy’. It suspends disbelief. In other words, by covering the suture it also enables a kind of voyeuristic fantasy to continue. PS: It doesn’t reveal the terms of its violent construction and that’s what’s really interesting. AC: In Exhibit Ex-Africa, for example, you’ve shown the cloth (the ‘tablier’) with, as it were, an absent centre. For those of us who have seen those photos of the casts at the Musée de L’Homme this is a very poignant image. But a lot of your work deals with the question of subjectivity (your own in particular), and sometimes this involves using symbolic items that are only really accessible to you. Perhaps the image of the cloth wrapped around its absent centre is one of these. I’ve seen the photographs that you took surreptitiously at the Musée de L’Homme. I know the absent centre that they disclose, but most viewers of Exhibit Ex-Africa won’t. So there are different levels of meaning in your work, as with many artists. There are always spaces which are not necessarily accessible and can only be appreciated through a different kind of interrogation of the work on a very personal level. And then there are other figures which are so iconic that there is no mistaking aspects of their significance, like the figure of Saartjie Baartman. Do you see the more obscure references as a problem in work which purports to be so centrally concerned with larger political issues? PS: I think things sometimes function metonymically. There’s a sense if you look at that cloth, even if you don’t know what it is, you would soon realize that it is covering something up, so to speak. This could be seen then as something ‘missing’. The cloth then, placed in close proximity as it is to the more obviously identifiable images of Saartjie Baartman, would be read through the context that her images produce. This kind of ambiguous lack is really important to me. I think it makes the viewer active in projecting meaning. I would not want my work to be seen simply as didactically political, so I would not see this degree of ambiguity as a problem in relation to the apparent political positioning of my practice. What I found interesting is when I took those photographs I felt very voyeuristic, horrified and shocked all at once. I also felt that I should see these things. It was an odd sort of defiance. I needed to see them but I was horrified nonetheless. I photographed them and I’ve had the photographs for years. AC: Those casts in the Musée de L’Homme are powerfully horrifying objects. Much of your own work has dealt with the idea of the cast, the imprint of the body’s traces. For example in the video Per Kind Permis sion: Fieldwork (Figures 5, 6, 7) you’ve used the repetitive and painful act of plastering,
AC: In relation to the act of viewing what this seems to do is suspend or extend the ‘fantasy’. It suspends disbelief. In other words, by covering the suture it also enables a kind of voyeuristic fantasy to continue. PS: It doesn’t reveal the terms of its violent construction and that’s what’s really interesting. AC: In Exhibit Ex-Africa, for example, you’ve shown the cloth (the ‘tablier’) with, as it were, an absent centre. For those of us who have seen those photos of the casts at the Musée de L’Homme this is a very poignant image. But a lot of your work deals with the question of subjectivity (your own in particular), and sometimes this involves using symbolic items that are only really accessible to you. Perhaps the image of the cloth wrapped around its absent centre is one of these. I’ve seen the photographs that you took surreptitiously at the Musée de L’Homme. I know the absent centre that they disclose, but most viewers of Exhibit Ex-Africa won’t. So there are different levels of meaning in your work, as with many artists. There are always spaces which are not necessarily accessible and can only be appreciated through a different kind of interrogation of the work on a very personal level. And then there are other figures which are so iconic that there is no mistaking aspects of their significance, like the figure of Saartjie Baartman. Do you see the more obscure references as a problem in work which purports to be so centrally concerned with larger political issues? PS: I think things sometimes function metonymically. There’s a sense if you look at that cloth, even if you don’t know what it is, you would soon realize that it is covering something up, so to speak. This could be seen then as something ‘missing’. The cloth then, placed in close proximity as it is to the more obviously identifiable images of Saartjie Baartman, would be read through the context that her images produce. This kind of ambiguous lack is really important to me. I think it makes the viewer active in projecting meaning. I would not want my work to be seen simply as didactically political, so I would not see this degree of ambiguity as a problem in relation to the apparent political positioning of my practice. What I found interesting is when I took those photographs I felt very voyeuristic, horrified and shocked all at once. I also felt that I should see these things. It was an odd sort of defiance. I needed to see them but I was horrified nonetheless. I photographed them and I’ve had the photographs for years. AC: Those casts in the Musée de L’Homme are powerfully horrifying objects. Much of your own work has dealt with the idea of the cast, the imprint of the body’s traces. For example in the video Per Kind Permis sion: Fieldwork (Figures 5, 6, 7) you’ve used the repetitive and painful act of plastering,
ABSTRACT
AC: In relation to the act of viewing what this seems to do is suspend or extend the ‘fantasy’. It suspends disbelief. In other words, by covering the suture it also enables a kind of voyeuristic fantasy to continue.
