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(2014) when she summarises her intention “to produce subjective allocation of value: by deeming an object location that Sacks presents is a location that evades “brief” as that most problematic of patriarchal, colonial
alternate versions of reality (and the future) powerful as valuable, and entering it into the marketplace, a time. Although set in the contemporary, the location documents, questions “how is one sited (on ground, in
enough to override the current present.” that object is imbued with value by the process of reaches back into independence, and further back history, in practice, etc.)?”
Deirdre Pretorius employs a design aesthetic intentionality. into colonization. The location is a palimpsest, and The homepage of the website of this group is
to create her Cabinets of Curiosities for the Postcolony Jeweller Thato Radebe locates his work Sacks writes in her artist book that “Straight lines and divided into four blocks, and the first three deal with
II, a series of five framed collections of unique objects within the Covid epidemic, and uses the virus itself as correct angles do not describe what have become realms, localities and scale. It is from this positionality
grouped by colour, form and material. The objects are a source of inspiration for the design and production monuments to the shifting everyday life...” – this very location of the sector of architecture – that
strange and beautiful – things you haven’t seen before – of a ring that draws upon the crown-like structure of There are two key processes that Sacks the fourth block, that of strategy, is developed. Here,
and, because of their seeming lack of function, situates the virus. Variations on the placement of the spike employs. The first is the act of layering time, where an interrogation of hegemony is the group’s process of
the artist’s position within the realm of the object and proteins create a sense of the variability of experience elements from the past are highlighted as they do decolonial practice. The strategy is to undo the baseline,
its materiality: the thing and its elemental components. of the pandemic. Some positive, some negative, their work in the present. The second process is the and do away with assumptions that the practice of
However, this is just the starting point. Pretorius then some constructive, some destructive, Radebe deeming of what is significant. In this way, the artist architecture is linear because, the practitioners' notes,
goes on to craft names – ostensibly scientific in their highlights the importance of perspective. In a corollary side-steps the taint and disavowal that accompanies “notions of place, space, and belonging are steeped
fictional etymology and imaginary nomenclature – for of location and practice, Radebe applies the process much of living with colonization, and bring the fore – in fictions, and ongoing practices of extraction,
each of the objects, and it is here where the objects then of process of multimodality “in relation to work that deems as important – the elements left behind that, displacement and dispossession.”
begin to appear as somewhat magical – as talismans, functions as both personal adornment (jewellery) and still today, are significant in the contemporary lived Christa van Zyl’s Voorskoot presents a
vestibules of energy, actors of intention, carriers of visual artefact (sculpture)”. experience. complex amalgamation of positionalities from which
spells. By giving each object a name, Pretorius imbues The Remaindering by Ruth Sacks is an artist Anna Abengowe and Tuliza Sindi from the she interrogates the “personal” and the “professional”.
each object with meaning, with history and with gravity, book that locates the project within Kinshasa, the her(e) : otherwise platform are architects who locate The gendered institution van Zyl occupies demands of
which the artist then extends by creating NFTs for each, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This themselves at the very pinnacle of post-colonial her a near-schizophrenic split between her roles as an
and placing them within the virtual marketplace. In is the end location of Sack’s research that began, activism in this historically masculine, colonizing academic and as a mother. Even further, the institution
effect, then, the artist’s process of naming becomes a earlier, in Brussels, the Congo’s colonizing country. It sector by problematizing the primary questions of, demands simultaneous roles as teacher and researcher,
process of bestowing value. is here, in Kinshasa, that Sacks found and collected “who gets to ask, and how?”, “what gets asked on the one hand, and the more invisible service-based
In her artist statement to the exhibition, Pretorius the remainders of colonization and independence. about/what is deemed a valid subject?” and “where student support tasks. The Covid period brought this
writes that she is interested in “the construction of new These snippets and off-cuts of architectures and do questions get to begin and end?”. These false dichotomy into stark relief, where all these roles
knowledge… and how we assign value to such new plans, unfinished and unrealized, were gathered interrogations point the way to the space occupied by had to be fulfilled simultaneously, a reality that prompts
Forts of Sand: Reimagining the aesthet- her(e) : otherwise The Remaindering Voorskoot Heavy is the head that
knowledge.” In her process, the artist makes clear the together to create an artist book of “remainders”. The ics of demolition through worldbuilding Anna Abengowe and Tuliza Sindi. Ruth Sacks. Christa van Zyl. wears the CROWN a group of women architects who, in focusing on the van Zyl to write, in her artist statement for the exhibition,
Miliswa Ndziba. Thato Radebe.
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