ABSTRACT
Artists such as Kiluanji Kia Henda and Sethembile Msezane create performance narratives in historical locations, which they document and disseminate, in order to underscore paradoxical realities and values. Within a burgeoning multiplicity of identities and hybrid practices, wider understandings of documentary's relationship to contemporary art, and its capacities to access more refined and complex versions of 'the prismatic nature of truth', are being generated. The artist explains that 'perhaps this is the only way to bridge the gap between historical reality and post-colonial imagination in a nation like Angola'. T. J. Demos argues further that 'the use of fiction in contemporary art actually remains connected to the world of socio-political reality, suggesting a mode of construction, of building new ways of comprehending events and organizing memories'. If the documentary idiom is utilized in photography or contemporary art, attempts to sensitively negotiate the tenuous space between observing and recording, and ethics and aesthetics, should be sustained throughout the artist's or photographer's practice.
