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Minnette Vári is a South African artist whose
work since 1998 has involved an innovative use of digital video
techniques, to map images of her own body into scenes from mainstream
media sources. This exhibition presented two video installations by Vári
shown during consecutive weeks: Alien (1998) and Oracle (1999). We chose
the title Media Work to describe what is held in common by these two video
pieces: They use the news media as the plastic material for the
construction of art.
Vári's video works are critical of the relationship between the (female)
body and the continuous stream of media images which surround and flood it
in the contemporary world. By moving beyond straightforward ideas of
identity, and the possibility of it being directly represented in art and
visual culture, Vári's concerns are at once more poetic, and more
monumental. In Alien (1998) she refashions televised images of South
Africa as "foreign" to her. She attempts, awkwardly, to reinsert herself
into the spectacularized and repetitive form media has made of everyday
events surrounding South Africa's transition to democracy. In Oracle
(1999), she recasts herself as Goya's
Saturn Devouring his Children - by
voraciously cramming all the conflicting and mediated histories of
present-day Africa into her mouth, swallowing and gagging on them. For
Vári the figure becomes a model for postcolonial identity, craving to
assimilate every fragment of contradictory information into one hybrid
body.
We have attempted to give a context to this media work via artist
statements and essay. But ultimately the context for these pieces is a
somewhat familiar one, at least on the surface, for the American viewer.
The images are familiar because they are to a great extent those images
gathered abroad and then re-disseminated by our own Western media
conglomerates. What the artist does with this plastic stuff makes it
another matter.
The exhibition, catalogue, and accompanying events were made possible
through a grant from the Dorius/Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil
Liberties and Freedom of Expression, and via financial and organizational
support from the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, Smith College. I would like
to personally thank Rene Heavlow, Cyndee Button, Marjorie Senechal, John
Davis, Becky Davis, Gary Niswonger, Gretchen Schneider, and Laurie
Fenlason for their patience and dedication. Thanks to the Art Department
for allowing us to exhibit in the Jannotta Gallery. My gratitude goes to
Suzannah Fabing and the Smith College Museum of Art for encouraging me to
follow through with this project, and for financial support. Thanks to
Valley Communications Systems, Chicopee, for technical support.
Rebecca-Ellen Farrell, a student in my class on Art and Consumption, went
to study with Minnette Vári in Johannesburg during the summer of 2002.
Becca's enthusiasm inspired me to bring Minnette to Smith College. Susan
Greenspan offered editorial and technical advice. Minnette herself
assisted with all aspects of the exhibition design and planning. I am
grateful for her commitment through the whole process. The presence of the
two works on this exhibition and the images reproduced here are courtesy
of the artist and the
Serge Ziegler Galerie, Zürich.
John Peffer
Smith College, February 2003
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Alien
see artist's statement |
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"How can one not be tempted to divine one's
own destiny from the televisual tarot of global media? There were times
when, told in the language of international news, the histories of my
country would unfold in unrecognisable ways, and my place within these
stories would become disjointed and unbearable. I wanted to speak of the
discomfort of a thousand ill-fitting interpretations. Using television
images relating to the transformative events between 1994 and 1998, I
attempted to locate my own implicit presence in the narrative of these
critical times. My project was about reclaiming these moments,
re-inscribing them with the movements of my own body, the sound of my own
heartbeat - a memory recounted in flesh and bones. Although my body is not
a-political nor neutral and my access to it is not uncomplicated, I wanted
to bring the extremes of fear, euphoria, desire, rage and loss into a
language beyond democratic rhetoric.
When used as an instrument against the forgetfulness of history, the
strategies of art become volatile and impatient. Through my work I tear at
the fabric of different realities, severing images from their origin and
cleaving apart the logic of their familiarity. The links I make in this
process can be chilling and brutal, but often the things we can't bear to
face are the most telling witnesses of our times. Considering the
socio-political imprint that this place and time has left on me, I choose
in my work to bring the peculiarities of a mutating subjectivity to bear
on the specificities of its historical context. We need all the individual
fragments we can find in order to anticipate the places our histories
could take us."
- Minnette Vári
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