CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE SAN PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA
29th March -12th May 2001
Madena Kasanga: Huts
Over the last two
years the October Gallery has mounted an ongoing series of exhibitions
from shamanic cultures which have explored the art produced by Aboriginal
Australian, Huichol Indian and Peruvian Amazon artists respectively.
Between late March and early May 2001, the Gallery presented a rare
opportunity to view the art of another shamanic culture, the San people
of the Kalahari desert region of Southern Africa.
Now understood to be one of the oldest cultures surviving into the present
from very ancient times, the San people are best known today as direct
descendants of those earlier groups whose highly stylised rock art is
found decorating rock walls and caves throughout Southern Africa. Some
of these rock paintings have been dated to 27,000 years BP, and the
highly evolved tradition of this very ancient and beautiful form of
painting was maintained until relatively recent times.
Formerly semi-nomadic groups of hunter-gatherers, the San have seen
their ancient ways severely disrupted ever since the first arrival of
Dutch settlers on their ancestral lands. Treated in ways recalling the
manner in which the American Indians were abused on their own sacred
territories, the San groups that survive today have been further divided
and scattered due to recent political conflicts, having been forced
from one country to another by the succession of liberation struggles
taking place in Angola and Namibia. Today they exist as semi-political
refugees forcibly resettled in some of the most barren areas of the
Kalahari where they continue to practice what remains of their traditional
culture, eking out the barest of existences from an arid and hostile
environment. Unlike the elegant pictures of eland hunting and the highly
spiritualised world that their ancestors depicted on the rock faces
in former times, the art of the San of today tells of a displaced culture
caught between the familiar world of the past and the harsh exigencies
of the present — yet still somehow capable, in their expressive paintings
and strikingly simple linocuts, of sounding a message of hope in the
face of continuing adversity.
This exhibition took place in association with Melt
2000 who, during the months of April and May, brought a number of
San musicians to the UK to perform a series of concerts and give workshops,
both at the October Gallery and elsewhere in London, under the project
title of SanScapes. The art exhibition, celebrated one of the oldest
cultures alive today, and served as a curtain-raiser to the Celebrate
South Africa festival that the South African High Commissionorganised
to focus attention on the unique and highly diverse patchwork of different
ethnic groups that make up the complex weave of that ‘rainbow nation.’
The exhibition proved to be a tremendous success with many of the works
being sold. Articles about the exhibition appeared in many newspapers
and magazines, including a major write-up in Germany's Frankfurter
Algemeine.
Other links.