Research Catalog

Title

Public art in South Africa : bronze warriors and plastic presidents / edited by Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann.

Publication

Bloomington, Indiana, USA : Indiana University Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Miller, Kim (Kimberly A.)
• Schmahmann, Brenda, 1960-

Description

xxxix, 315 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

How does South Africa deal with public art from its years of colonialism and apartheid? How do new monuments address fraught histories and commemorate heroes of the struggle? Across South Africa, statues commemorating figures such as Cecil Rhodes have provoked heated protests, while new works commemorating icons of the liberation struggle have also sometimes proved contentious. In this lively volume, Kim Miller, Brenda Schmahmann, and an international group of contributors examine statues and memorials as well as performance, billboards, and other temporal modes of communication, considering the implications of not only the exposure but also erasure of events and icons from the public domain. Revealing how public visual expressions articulate histories and memories, they explore how such works may serve as a forum in which tensions surrounding race, gender, identity, or nationhood play out.

Series Statement

African expressive cultures

Uniform Title

African expressive cultures

Alternative Title

Bronze warriors and plastic presidents

Subject

• 2000-2099
• Public art > Social aspects > South Africa
• Public art > Political aspects > South Africa
• Public art > South Africa > Public opinion
• Art > Mutilation, defacement, etc. > South Africa
• Public opinion > South Africa
• South Africa
• visual arts
• monuments
• urban areas
• Art > Mutilation, defacement, etc
• Public art > Political aspects
• Public art > Public opinion
• Public opinion
• Race relations
• Social conditions
• South Africa > Social conditions > 21st century
• South Africa > Race relations > 21st century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Engaging with public art in South Africa, 1999-2015 / Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann -- Part 1: Negotiating difficult histories -- A Janus-like juncture: reconciling past and present at the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park / Elizabeth Rankin -- A thinking stone and some pink presidents: negotiating Afrikaner nationalist monuments at the University of the Free State / Brenda Schmahmann -- The mirror and the square-old ideological conflicts in motion: Church Square slavery memorial / Gavin Younge -- Part 2: Defining and redefining heroes -- Public art as political crucible: Andries Botha's Shaka and contested symbols of Zulu masculinity and culture in KwaZulu-Natal / Liese van der Watt -- Mandela's walk and Biko's ghosts: public art and the politics of memory in Port Elizabeth's city center / Naomi Roux -- Commemorating Solomon Mahlangu: the making and unmaking of a "struggle" icon / Gary Baines -- Part 3: Erasures and ruins -- The pain of memory and the violence of erasure: real and figural displays of female authority in the public sphere / Kim Miller -- Transgressive touch: ruination, public feeling and the Sunday Times Heritage Project / Duane Jethro -- Part 4: Ephemeral projects -- Public art, troubling tropes: an unsettling intervention in Cape Town / Shannen Hill -- Unsettling ambivalences and ambiguities in Mary Sibande's Long Live the Dead Queen public art project / Leora Farber -- Unsanctioned: the inner-city interventions of Julie Lovelace / Karen von Veh -- Rage against the state: political funerals and queer visual activism in post-apartheid South Africa / Kylie Thomas -- Telltale signs: unsanctioned graffiti interventions in post-apartheid Johannesburg / Matthew Ryan Smith.

ISBN

• 9780253029928
• 0253029929
• 9780253029591
• 0253029597

LCCN

• 2017023154
• 40027611480

OCLC

• ocn987437382
• 987437382
• SCSB-8879412

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library