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
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
The thirtieth anniversary of the Soweto uprisings: reading the shadow in Sam Nzima's iconic photograph of Hector Pieterson
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147536 , vital:38647 , https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2007.40.2.52
- Description: This haunting photograph (Fig. 1) from the 1976 Soweto Uprisings in South Africa is often referred to as the single most important photograph to emerge from the struggle against apartheid (Purtilo 1999:22). According to South African film director Feizel Mamdoo, there are particular moments in history that are defined by photographic, celluloid, or television images, such as the world famous photograph of the Saigon girl, naked and burning from napalm (Worsdale 1998; see also Richards 2001). He argues that the iconic photograph by Sam Nzima depicting Hector Pieterson being carried in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubu, with his distraught sister Antionette1 running alongside, is comparable in the way that “it marks history, both social and personal” (Worsdale 1998).
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- Date Issued: 2007
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
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
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
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
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
The art of change: perspectives on transformation in South Africa
- Authors: Makhubu, Nomusa , Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147642 , vital:38657 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/09528822.2013.798180
- Description: There have been almost two decades of democracy in South Africa, yet rising anger and violent discontent lay bare continuing inequity. It is timely to ask the question: can South Africans really be frank about how meaningful the transformation from oppressive political and economic structures has been? Does the inclination towards neo-liberalism and capitalism in South Africa’s post-Apartheid democracy allow real change? Where economic inequality and spatial divisions still persist and, indeed, are actively reproduced by current market forces, can South Africans really create inclusive and integrative spaces? The Art of Change: Perspectives on Transformation in South Africa confronts some of these issues, reopening debates and encouraging reflection on cultural dynamics in South Africa during the past two decades.
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- Date Issued: 2013
Walking The Other Side: Doung Anwar Jahangeer
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147681 , vital:38660 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/09528822.2013.796204
- Description: While certain forms of mobility are romanticized in the privileged worlds of art and academia, the need to move is often triggered by vulnerability, and literal pathways on the ground reveal much about human engagement with place. This article considers the work of Mauritian-born architect/artist/performer Doung Anwar Jahangeer who is based in Durban, South Africa. Inspired by Michel de Certeau, Jahangeer argues that pathways reveal the characteristics of society and uses the act of walking to question the degree to which meaningful transformation has taken place in South Africa. His City Walk performances disclose to audiences how grounded ways of engaging with movement can challenge the metaphoric blindness that handicaps privileged movement. Focusing on his performances from the 2012 ‘Making Way’ exhibition the author interprets Jahangeer's work as challenging blind spots with regard to space, particularly partial spaces still marred by Apartheid. Through performative walking he encourages his audiences to read between the lines of road markings, cracks and signs, and to experience the power of corporeally engaging with the road by thoughtfully placing one foot in front of the other as a mode of seeing.
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- Date Issued: 2013
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
Rise and fall of apartheid: photography and the bureaucracy of everyday life
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147604 , vital:38653 , DOI: 10.1080/02533952.2014.998052
- Description: The exhibition catalogue Rise and Fall of Apartheid is a valuable collection of photographic images that create, according to Enwezor, “a critical visualization and interrogation of […] [apartheid’s] normative symbols, signs and representation” (18). The catalogue focuses on African subjects as “agents of their own emancipation” (18), and contextualises South Africa’s anticipation of the end of apartheid within broader global changes in the late 1980s. Essays by Okwui Enwezor, Michael Godby, Achille Mbembe, Darren Newbury, Colin Richards, Patricia Hayes, Andries Walter Olifant, Rory Bester and Khwezi Gule are included in the catalogue, and are interspersed between photographic images that are grouped in chronological clusters: 1948–1959; 1960–1969; 1970–1979; 1980–1989; and 1990–1995.
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- Date Issued: 2014
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
What "global art" and current (re)turns fail to see: a modest counter-narrative of "not-another-biennial"
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147314 , vital:38625 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC176315
- Description: What is the scope of "global art" and who drives its framing within the current climate of 'corporate globalization' (Demos 2009 : 7, emphasis in original)? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does "global art", including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of "new art worlds" in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term "global art" is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion.
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- Date Issued: 2015
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
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
Walking into Africa in a Chinese way: Hua Jiming’s mindful entry as counterbalance
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146167 , vital:38501 , ISBN 9791024005799 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=VGSwDwAAQBAJanddq=Afrique-Asie:+Arts,+espaces,+pratiquesandsource=gbs_navlinks_s
- Description: Book abstract. The links between Africa and Asia are at the very heart of globalization. Understanding its richness and complexity requires a study carried out from various points of view. Particular attention to culture is essential. Centered on the work of visual artists and performers, on town planning, literature and spirituality, the essays gathered here call on many disciplines: art history and history, anthropology, sociology, geography, architecture, comparative literature, visual and culture studies. They constitute a network of crossed views on a subject which no serious reflection on globalization can do today.
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- Date Issued: 2016
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
Reaching sideways, writing our ways: the orientation of the arts of Africa discourse
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K , Miko, William B , Ijisakin, Eyitayo T , Tchibozo, Romuald , Hwati, Masimba , NG-Yang, Kristin , Mudekereza, Patrick , Nalubowa, Aidah , Hyacinthe. Genevieve , Jason, Lee-Roy , Abdou, Eman , Chachage, Rehema , Tumusiime, Amanda , Sousa, Suzana , Muchemwa, Fadzai
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145886 , vital:38475 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1162/AFAR_a_00341
- Description: In Rehema Chachage's video installation, Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (2010), sculptural objects representing old-fashioned transistor radios are mounted on the wall, side by side (Fig. 1). Embedded in each radio is a small video screen, which reveals a figure who stands in one place while the vertical line of the radio tuner crosses her body in search of the desired frequency (Figs. 2–3). A man's voice wafts in and out as it is periodically interrupted by unsolicited noise, revealing the difficulty of relating to others when sound is interrupted or there is an absence of voice. Voice, writes Chachage, is a “prerequisite for interlocution and the construction of discourse.” This work engages with the assertion that to “live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree …” and to do so full heartedly with your “eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit … whole body and deeds” (Bakhtin 1984:293).
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- Date Issued: 2017
Situating Africa: an alter-geopolitics of knowledge, or Chapungu rises
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146112 , vital:38496 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1162/AFAR_a_00340
- Description: This journal issue marks the beginning of a new partnership with African Arts as Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, joins the editorial consortium. As the National Research Foundation Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, I will work with collaborators based largely on the African continent to produce one issue of African Arts per year. This first issue has grown out of conversations with artists, curators, and writers based in Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa at a publishing workshop organized by Rhodes University, as well as an institutional collaboration with Makerere University in Uganda. It also includes a dialogue with colleagues in Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, the US, Uganda, and Angola/Portugal. A core goal of our work is to significantly increase the participation of authors based on the African continent as a way of strengthening our discipline with a scholarly approach that takes seriously an alter-geopolitics of knowledge as a decolonial concept (Koopman 2011; Mignolo 2002).
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- Date Issued: 2017