OUR HISTORY IS A BLESSING AND A CURSE

My name is Shalom Mushwana. I come from Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and I am an honours student in Visual Art at the University of Johannesburg. Recently I was afforded the opportunity to take part in the Professional Development Programme, which is run by Scotland+Venice. It introduces post-graduates to a professional working environment at the Venice Biennale.

The aim of the programme is for young scholars to build networks with people, especially artists, involved in the Biennale.

If I ever got this opportunity again, I would most definitely take it up. It was such an invaluable experience, being in Venice and meeting a strong network of international individuals working with Alberta. As an aspiring artist, it was a great personal experience too. I couldn’t have asked for anything more exciting, interesting, and engaging than this.

Some themes were difficult to deal with. As a non-Diasporic person who is Black and was born in South Africa, it’s heart-wrenching to hear Diasporic stories but I also felt an immediate relationship with Diasporic people, as I am a South African living in a divided nation regardless of being a supposed born-free. Especially in a ‘new’ South Africa that still has an archaic residue that sits below the surface. In many ways, there is a similar residue existing in Alberta’s work, where there are things that undulate beneath the surface and underneath the water. I often think of the sculptural gates that say, ‘What lies below?’. I think about the stories that are embedded on the surface of the ocean from the slave trade. It’s like untold stories and histories that lie underneath the sea. It’s a historical residue that is sometimes forgotten.

The Biennale has a very specific demographic. I would say 40+ year old heteronormative white couples. Black people are a minority amongst the visitors. Given this demographic, I experienced a lot of implicit racism. There’s an exoticising gaze where people stare at you and almost feel entitled to do so. It was good to hear some people be able to tell where I was from by how I speak. Someone would say ‘You have a very particular accent. Are you from South Africa?’ and I would say ‘Yes, how could you tell?’. I would think, do we, as South Africans really sound a particular way? I had a sense of foreign-ness. That’s how I viewed Alberta’s work. Being a foreign body in a foreign place. There’s a sense of not feeling settled and feeling like one cannot truly settle within a space but finding a gentle way to exist while still being critical. It meant having to be mindful of not being ignorant of one’s own history or Blackness within a specific amount of whiteness.

It’s always difficult to talk about violence against Black bodies. There’s often resistance to fully engage with acts of violence. Sometimes, I found people had a desensitised attitude when talking about violence against Black bodies because it has been such a perpetuated narrative throughout our existence. This is something Alberta nailed – a considered and sensitive retelling of this narrative. Although she’s very sensitive to the trauma that Black bodies have been through, she doesn’t tell the stories in a re-traumatising way. When considering Alberta’s work, the history it refers to, and how it speaks to violence against Black bodies … there’s still something nurturing about it. There’s a tenderness and thoughtfulness towards the future for Black bodies and Black youth, and especially with how we could exist in the world.

Through this experience in Venice, I’ve learnt be brave and not be bound by the conventions of the South African art world. Technically, people shouldn’t be bound by anything, especially because we, in South Africa, have such a progressive way of making art. I think it’s more engaging than the western way of making. When I came back, I thought: ‘we’re actually quite strong as artists here in South Africa’. We’re very special and we have such a unique history. Coming back made me more cognizant of how important it is to draw on our own histories and to re-narrate them. It’s also important to find ways to share these undulating stories about ourselves and where we come from. There’s a great deal to talk about, although these are never easy conversations.

Our history is a blessing and a curse.