"Knowing With": New Rhodes Board Navigates Collaboration, Intimacy, and Solidarity
- Authors: Baasch, Rachel M , Fọlárànmí, Stephen , Koide, Emi , Kakande, Angelo , Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147514 , vital:38645 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00523
- Description: Rhodes University (or UCKAR), based in Makhanda, South Africa, joined the African Arts editorial consortium in 2016 and its first journal issue—vol. 50, no. 2—was published in 2017. Initially the board was run by Ruth Simbao, with the aim of developing collaborations with other scholars, particularly those based on the African continent and within the global south (Simbao 2017: 1). For the second Rhodes issue (Summer 2018), Simbao worked with Guest Board Member Amanda Tumusiime from Makerere University, and for the third Rhodes issue (Summer 2019) she collaborated with Stephen Folárànmí from Obáfémi Awólówò University, Ilé-Ifè, Nigeria, who at the time was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rhodes.
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- Date Issued: 2020
A Crown on the Move: stylistic integration of the Luba-Lunda complex in Lunda-Kazembe performance
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147524 , vital:38646 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2006.39.3.26
- Description: Carried on a scarlet and zebra-hide litter above the heads of a throbbing crowd, Mwata Kazembe XIX gloriously stretches out his arms as if to embrace a world that is his own (Fig. 1). As he parts the sea of well-wishers, splashes of red burst into view and the talking drum beats out its decree. Basking in a charged clamor where the senses blur in clouds of dust, Mwata gracefully sways from side to side, jangling the beads and cowries on the back of his akatasa crown. It is on this day that the Lunda-Kazembe Crown moves.
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- Date Issued: 2013
A Geopolitics of knowledge and the value of discomfort:
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146444 , vital:38526 , https://www.ru.ac.za/fineart/latestnews/alutacontinuadoingitfordaddytenyearson.html
- Description: In 2006, the short essay ‘Doing it for Daddy’ by visual artist Sharlene Khan caused controversy when it expressed the opinion that since 1994, ‘transformation’ in the visual arts field in South Africa seemed to have halted at the point of White women replacing White men in positions of power. It questioned this new position of dominance in institutions that remained colonially and racially untransformed. On the 16 and 17th of September 2016, the School of Fine Art at Rhodes University will host a one-day symposium ‘A luta Continua: Doing it for Daddy - Ten years on…’ which seeks to both commemorate that article and those who ‘speak up’, but also, fundamentally, to continue looking at the ways in which various social oppressions intersect in the fields of art history and visual arts in South Africa. Presenters include Khwezi Gule, Nontobeko Ntombela, Nomusa Makhubu, Same Mdluli, Fouad Asfour, Ruth Simbao, Sharlene Khan, students from Wits School of Arts and Rhodes Art History and Visual Culture, as well as a performance by visual artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula.
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- Date Issued: 2016
AmaNdebele, Peter Magubane and Sandra Klopper: book review
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147336 , vital:38627 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC31002
- Description: AmaNdebele is a very attractive book with beautifully reproduced colour photographs taken by the renowned photographer Peter Magubane, who secured enormous credibility as a photojournalist during the violent years of apartheid. While some South African readers who browse through the glossy portrayals of ceremonial attire and homestead decorations may recall Magubane's earlier books such as Soweto speaks (1981) and Soweto: The fruit of fear (1986) in which the photographer laid bare the ferocious violence of apartheid rule, many readers will skip over the nuances of both Magubane's disrupted career and the contentious relationship between the Ndebele people and the South African apartheid government.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Between place and a raised foot: the pace, protest and sway of ambulatory art
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146468 , vital:38528 , https://www.ug.edu.gh/events/arts-council-african-studies-association-acasa-17th-triennial-symposium-august-8-â-13-2017
- Description: ACASA facilitates communication among scholars, teachers, students, artists, museum specialists, collectors, and all others interested in the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. Its goals are to promote greater understanding of African material and expressive culture in all its forms, and to encourage contact and collaboration with African and Diaspora artists and scholars.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Blind spots: trickery and the'opaque stickiness' of seeing
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147303 , vital:38624 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC176319
- Description: In a flash the spot will disappear, and in its place - and this is the interesting thing - there is nothing. According to experimental psychology, the eye does not fill in the blind spot, but tricks us into thinking that it has been filled. The blind spot is pure absence of vision, and cannot be experienced at all. The blind spot is an invisible absence : an absence whose invisibility is itself invisible (Elkins 1996 : 170).
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- Date Issued: 2015
Capturing the Soweto Uprising: South Africa’s most iconic photograph lives on
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147036 , vital:38587 , https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-soweto-uprising-south-africas-most-iconic-photograph-lives-on-98318
- Description: Sam Nzima, the photographer who captured the iconic image of the 1976 Soweto Uprising passed awayon May 12, 2018. The photograph was one of six frames showing Mbuyisa Makhubu carrying 12-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police, and Hector’s sister, Antionette Pieterson (now Sithole) running alongside.
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- Date Issued: 2018
China-Africa relations: research approaches
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147503 , vital:38644 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2012.45.2.1
- Description: About to board a plane in Johannesburg, I handed my temporary boarding pass to the flight attendant who exclaimed,“Simbao, you have a fong kong boarding pass!” Fong kong is a slang term used in South Africa meaning fake, cheap, or low quality and is often associated with Chinese imports. In this case, the term was used to refer to a temporary pass issued earlier on my journey that needed to be replaced with a new boarding pass in Johannesburg.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Condition Report 3: Art History in Africa: debating localization,legitimization and new solidarities
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K , Kouoh, Koyo , Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C , Sousa, Suzana , Koide, Emi
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146055 , vital:38491 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1162/afar_a_00456
- Description: Following on from the African Arts dialogue, “Zimbabwe Mobilizes: ICAC's Shift from Coup de Grăce to Cultural Coup” (Simbao et al. 2017) this dialogue considers another important event in the visual arts that recently took place on the African continent. Like the International Conference on African Cultures (ICAC) that was held in Harare in 2017, this event in Dakar contributes in important ways towards a shift of the center of gravity of the global academy, particularly the study of art history in and of Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Cosmolocal orientations: trickster spatialization and the politics of cultural bargaining in Zambia
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146044 , vital:38490 , DOI 10.1080/19301944.2018.1532379
- Description: The spatialization of Africa is fraught, and places within Africa tend to be stereotyped by geographies of morality and simplistic rural/urban divides. Focusing on the spatial, cultural, and political bargaining of contemporary chiefs and cultural festivals in 21st-century Zambia, this article delinks cosmopolitanism and Afropolitanism from the city and associated attitudes of urbanity. Positioning place as a trickster character, it argues for a nuanced understanding of time-space imaginaries that refuses to bind people and identities to closed-down notions of place. In this article I propose the term cosmolocal, suggesting that the cosmolocal is an outward-engaging orientation that understands place as a profoundly discursive and situational process and that has the potential to exist anywhere. Many contemporary chiefs in Zambia embrace cosmolocalism, enabling them to escape the limitations of being viewed merely as custodians of culture who are limited to the space of the village framed historically as the warehouse of culture.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Cosmological efficacy and the politics of Sacred Place: Soli Rainmaking in contemporary Zambia
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147482 , vital:38642 , https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00163
- Description: In this article I analyze cosmological efficacy in light of the politicization and apparent secularization of contemporary annual ceremonies in Zambia, south-central Africa, which are framed by scholars as neotraditional (Lentz 2001), folklorized (van Binsbergen 1994), or retraditionalized (Gould 2005:3, 6) events. My term “festivalization” registers the formalization of Zambian performances such as rituals, harvest festivals, inaugurations, and initiations as annual festival events, but does not imply a pejorative attitude towards cultural change and so-called inauthenticity, as the words “folklorization” or “retraditionalization” seem to do.
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- Date Issued: 2014
David Kolaone fought for the right to define himself and his art:
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146981 , vital:38582 , https://theconversation.com/david-koloane-fought-for-the-right-to-define-himself-and-his-art-120687
- Description: Dr David Nthubu Koloane, who was born in South Africa in 1938, was an extraordinary pioneer in the visual arts who fiercely defied any form of categorisation. As an artist, teacher, mentor, curator, arts administrator and author, he fought for the human right to define oneself and to determine one’s own future.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Dialectics of dance and dress: the performative negotiation of Soli girl initiates (Moye) in Zambia
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147492 , vital:38643 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2010.43.3.64
- Description: During a 2005 dance rehearsal in Nkomeshya Village near Lusaka, Zambia, a group of Soli girl initiates (moye) entered a clearing, slowly moving towards the drummer who beckoned them with her rhythmic eats. The girls per-formed a polite curtseying step, reflecting the meek modesty they are taught to display when they humbly greet elders or their future husbands with downcast eyes.
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- Date Issued: 2010
Dungamanzi/stirring waters: Tsonga and Shangaan art from southern Africa, Nessa Leibhammer (Ed.): book reviews
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147358 , vital:38629 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC31053
- Description: A woman known as Nkoma We Lwandle (Cow of the Ocean) and a man, Dunga Manzi (Stirring Waters), are remembered as the first Tsonga diviners. Trained by Nzunzu - a powerful water serpent - they were pulled into a lake for a few months and later emerged as influential healers. Such stories (like the one relayed by Dederen of a young girl, Nsatimuni, who also temporarily disappeared into a lake) represent 'death' and 'rebirth', reflecting Arnold van Gennep's (1909) well-known schema of rites de passage: séparation, marge, and agrégation. Separated from daily life, these characters sink into another world where people breathe in water like a foetus in the liquid depths of a womb, evoking impending new birth (p. 171).
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- Date Issued: 2008
Igniting public space at the Chale Wote street art festival in Accra:
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147048 , vital:38588 , https://theconversation.com/igniting-public-space-at-the-chale-wote-street-art-festival-in-accra-102783
- Description: For the past eight years at the end of every August the James Town suburb of Ghana’s capital Accra has been taken over by the Chale Wote street art festival. During the festival, thousands of people, including local celebrities, artists, musicians, boxers and everyday revellers, move up and down the streets mostly by foot and at times on roller skates or unicycles.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Infecting the city: site-situational performance and ambulatory hermeneutics
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146156 , vital:38500 , DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2016.1266776
- Description: This article proposes the term ‘site-situational’ art or performance as a meaningful shift beyond ‘site-specificity’ and as a way to develop forward-moving and relational understandings of place. While place falls prey to Western, modernist stereotypes of closed, territorial geographic systems, site-situational readings, radical forms of ‘recognition’ and ambulatory hermeneutics enable an understanding of place as a wandering signifier, a trickster figure, and an in-the-moment conversation between environments and living beings. Through an analysis of the 2009 Infecting the City performing arts festival in South Africa, the article links site-situational performance to situational understandings of identification in the context of migration and xenophobia. It connects the participatory creative resistance aspired to by the Situationists that transforms situations rather than just recognises them, to the potential mutuality that can be experienced when one recognises oneself in the face of a ‘foreigner’ as well as the potential culpability that accompanies pro-active recognition-on-the-run.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Installation view: Chale Wote Festival 2018
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147059 , vital:38589 , https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/chale-wote-festival-accra-2018/
- Description: The Chale Wote festival opened on the Day of Re-Membering (20 August), when the Nai Priest poured libations at Brazil House in order to invoke the ancestral spirits. Core events took place on the streets and at various public spaces in James Town from 25 – 26 August. A number of artists including Kiffouly Youchaou, Kresiah Mukwazhi, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Charlotte Brathwaite, Percy Nii Nortey and the Ubulungiswa/Justice collective created works inside Ussher Fort and James Fort, which were built as slave forts by the Dutch and the British.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Lechwe Trust Collection:
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147547 , vital:38648 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2005.38.3.78
- Description: The caustic humor of The Arts Delegate (2000), by the cartoonist popularly known in Zambia as" Yuss," captures a dynamic readily found in the Zambian art world.
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- Date Issued: 2013
Light on a hill: building the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (Ed.): book review
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147324 , vital:38626 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC31011
- Description: Light on a hill : Building the Constitutional Court of South Africa is a visually elegant book that claims to 'reflect the spirit of the Court and be a beautiful object in its own right' (p. 8). Certainly this book is striking, with its rich photographs by Angela Buckland, its fresh, breathable design by Adele Prins, and its broad format with lavish centerfolds. Reading the text is in many ways an enlightening process of understanding the conceptual underpinnings of the buildings that make up the Constitutional Court complex, but this process of reading takes a few twists and turns along the way.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Pushing against ‘China-Africa’ slowly, and with small stories:
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146778 , vital:38556 , http://www.somethingweafricansgot.com/about-1
- Description: the new focus on african arts and critical thought.
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- Date Issued: 2019