Zanele Muholi, Tinasha Wakapila, Harare, Zimbabwe, 2011.
LOOKING BACK presents until October 12 works of three artists in the permanent collection of Zeitz MOCAA: Zanele Muholi (Born 1972, South Africa); Andrew Putter (Born 1965, South Africa); and Yinka Shonibare, MBE (Born 1962, United Kingdom).
This exhibition is situated in a purposed environment that suggests memories of both period and modernist interiors. Soundtracks by Zanele Muholi and Yinka Shonibare permeate the galleries. From both ends of the Zeitz MOCAA Pavilion we hear desperate cries of loss and longing.
Theorists such as John Berger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Satre, have clearly severed the possibility of any anonymity in seeing. We now understand that we do not simply look at something. Our gaze is returned and through this relationship of “viewing” and “being viewed” we become acutely aware that a process of LOOKING BACK happens.
We see ourselves reflected in that which we observe. We are now conscious of the impossibility of any neutrality in looking, but rather we see through lenses of prejudgment informed by religious conviction, gender, orientation, ethics, morality, economics, superstition, culture and even fear. Being aware that as we look, we ourselves are observed creates a state of anxiousness. We begin to recognize our responsibilities in the act of looking both at the present time but also at history itself.
Theories of looking have now delivered a new challenge. If the gaze is implicated in power relationships and even knowledge itself, what opportunities do we have to look in a more democratic way? A more responsible way?
Andrew Putter, installation view.
LOOKING BACK challenges us to consider why we gaze the way we do? What the outcomes are of the way we gaze? Can our gaze happen in a way that does not violate something that is different to us, that is unfamiliar or that we do not understand?
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Carla White
PR and Communications Manager, V&A Waterfront
Tel: 021 408 7500
Email: cwhite@waterfront.co.za
Yinka Shonibare, Addio del Passato, 2011.
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is a public not-for-profit cultural institution that focuses on collecting, preserving, researching, and exhibiting cutting edge contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora. It is the first major museum in Africa dedicated to contemporary art. Zeitz MOCAA was established in 2013 through a partnership of the V&A Waterfront and Jochen Zeitz and is generously funded by Growthpoint Properties, Jochen Zeitz, Public Investment Corporation (PIC) acting on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), V&A Waterfront, and Zeitz Collection. The Zeitz Collection acts as the founding collection of the museum. Mark Coetzee is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA. Zeitz MOCAA is housed at the Zeitz MOCAA Pavilion by the Bascule Bridge, V&A Waterfront. In 2016, Zeitz MOCAA will open in the transformed heritage listed Silo building, repurposed through a design by Heatherwick Studio, in the Clock Tower/Silo District of the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town.
Andrew Putter, Hottentots Holland – Flora Capensis 2, 2008.