Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa

Public Intimacy is a well-curated series of works that have some specter of defiance about them. There is also the sense that both public and private intimacies are being watched, on one end by curious bystanders (Ian Berry’s Cape Moffie Drag series) and on the other by some Foucauldian menace (William Kentridge’s Tide Table). The wide range of media, further, suggests a vibrancy of expression; those mixed-media works which use beads, textiles, and rubber (Zanele Muholi, Athi-Patra Ruga and Nicholas Hlobo) slyly evoke some outsider idea of South Africa while re-presenting materials in a fresh way and emphasizing their historical relevance/burden.  There is also plenty to say about a dominant gaze being turned around, in David Goldblatt’s 180-degree landscapes, Lindeka Qampi’s fashion portraits, and Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s high-rise series. The final intimacy is about the intimacy of looking, being looked at and the power dynamics implied therein.

Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, through 29 June 2014.

Athi-Patra Ruga, The Future White Women of Azania, performed as part of Performa Obscura in collaboration with Mikhael Subotzky, Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

David Goldblatt, Woman Smoking, Fordsburg, Johannesburg, 1975, pigment inkjet print, Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Zanele Muholi, Nomonde Mbusi, Berea, Johannesburg, 2007, gelatin silver print, Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco