Earlier this year, I conducted some research for the exhibition, "Apartheid: The South African Mirror", which opened last week at the CCCB in Barcelona. The exhibition looks at South African racism as a mirror for European racism. It traces the origins of modern racism, it follows it's spread throughout the world from the colonial era to the wealthiest regions of the world in the post-colonial era.
My contribution focussed on objects related to 'racial classification'. For this purpose, I visited the Wits Anatomy Museum where the following instruments of measurement and African face masks were sourced.
The Von Luschan Scale consists of rocks of varying colour and was an early instrument used to classify African skin clour. They were replaced by electro spectrometers during the 1950's.
This skull of French origin forms part of a series of crania which depicts the 'ideal' features of race. The skull shown here is the 'ideal' Caucasian skull. Go figure?
This African Mask from the Robert Dart Collection was created as a once of object which cannot be reproduced. The museum has an extensive collection of African masks which were created to classify African racial differentiation. The collection is somewhat controversial because of the infringements on human rights and the objectification of African people.
There has been some debate on removing the collection from display. I think that the collection provides an important resource for all of us to learn from and so it needs to remain accessible to the public.
My 'Rock Sale' is showing at the Unfair Trade exhibition opening at the Neue Galeriein Austria this weekend. This is truly an exciting opportunity as 'Rock Sale' has never been exhibited before and I could not have asked for a better platform for my work.
The Unfair Trade Exhibition attempts to draw attention to fair trade, above all fair exchange. This exhibition on the subject of global "Un/fair Trade" does not only show art works dealing with this theme, but collaborates with scientists from the fields of economics, sociology and cultural theory. In addition to the curated works, the exhibition also boast an online component. Participants are invited to contribute thoughts, opinions and art work on the subject of "Un/fair Trade" on the Net. At the same time, these texts, opinions and art works will be projected into the museum. Hence, every online visitor becomes a participant and artist in the exhibition.
The show boasts a star studded line up including works by fellow South African Andrew Tshabangu as well works by one of my favorite artists of all time Santiago Sierra. The organisers of the exhibition also intend to host a series of panel discussions and interviews with the aim of producing content in the area of fair trade and with the consideration of the following world renowned individuals:
Joseph Stiglitz (economist, Nobel prizewinner 2001), Amartya Sen (economist, Nobel prizewinner 1998), Branko Milanovic (economist, World Bank), gnacio Ramonet (Le Monde diplomatique), Paul Krugman (economist), Michael Walzer (philosopher), Martha Nussbaum (philosopher), Saskia Sassen (sociologist, economist), Jean-Pierre Boris (journalist, author of '(Un)fair trade'), Georg Gruber (Managing Director of FairTrade Austria), Bernhard Mark-Ungericht (business economist; specialist in corporate governance)
On September 11 2007, I was presented with the Highway Africa New Media Award (Individual category) for the collaborative work, sowetouprisings.com. The Highway Africa Award is only open to media professionals from the African continent. I attended the glitzy award ceremony and even got to jig on stage with mafikizolo. Sowetouprisings.com was created together with Babak fakhamzadeh the super hardcore Iranian/Dutch traveling web guru who is also the designer of this site.
South Africans dominated the awards, Kamal Ben won the non-profit category with islamonline.net whilst Vincent Maher won the corporate category with Amatomu.com.
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