David Krut Publishing

Kathryn Straughan and Rayda Becker. TAXI-007: Noria Mabasa. 2003. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishers. Taxi Art Book. R150,00. Wilhelm van Rensburg.

Noria Mabasa: Edu­cational supplement. 2003. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing.

Taxi Art books are sponsored by: The French Institute of South Africa (IFAS); Pro Helvetia Liaison Office, the Swiss Agency for Develop­ment and Cooperation; the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC). MTN Foundation is a partial funder of the educational supplements.

The Taxi Art Book series has become a keystone in the publication of writing about South African artists. It provides an accessible resource for those who want to learn more about South African artists, and especially to those who teach students about South African art. The choice of artists and authors rests in the hands of a committee whose members are all well­respected members of the art world in South Africa. Yet there is, sadly, a degree of uneven­ness of quality in these books in terms of both the ways in which they are conceptualised and the ways in which they are written. As one of those who teaches African art, and this includes contemporary African art, at a tertiary level, I have found that some Taxi Art books are more useful than others, some essays more useful than others. The book on Noria Mabasa is the latest in the Taxi offerings and within it I found encapsulated in its single volume some of the strengths and most of the weaknesses inherent in the series.

Let me start with the strengths. In an art world and a rural world in which patriarchy is still supreme, it is good to have a publication that considers the work of an artist who is a woman and who is a rural dweller. As Mabasa is one of very few women from rural communities who has ventured into the high art world of figurative sculpture, she stands as a beacon of possibility for other artists, and her importance is ac­knowledged through this publication. The book makes available information on Mabasa (although there are problems with the way in which this is presented) as well as illustrations of a large number of her sculptures. The essay by Rayda Becker offers insights into the ways in which Mabasa has been framed by the art world and how she has negotiated this in relation to her own sense of tradition and her place within Venda society. But while Becker’s article tackles these issues of identity and communication on a cross-cultural level in a manner which is recognisable as good art-historical practice, Straughan’s biographical essay on Mabasa introduces a note, which I found very disturbing.

Straughan’s essay starts with a potted ac­count of the Venda, a very generalised one, presumably on the assumption that one can only understand Mabasa’s work if one `knows’ the Venda. But Mabasa, as Becker (p. 70) points out, actually grew up speaking Shang­aan, so why are we not given an account of Shangaan culture as well? Further, in Taxi Art books on To Ractliffe and Jeremy Wafer we are not given accounts of South African (KwaZulu­Natal) English-speaking culture, but in the case of Mabasa, the exotic Other, this is presumed necessary. It is the tone of `Otherness’ of `curiosity’ that pervades Straughan’s essay that disturbs me most. It is present in the description of Mabasa’s yard: Two clay figures … stand at the entrance to the courtyard. Norla recreates these bas­relief sculptures on an annual basis. Her art is everywhere. Nubile maidens lie down in the position of respect vha a losha, sacred crocodiles bask in the sun, lions keep watch and pot plant holders in the shape of the female body are filled with succulents. This is her domestic space, the centre of her private life (p. 17).

Then follows a description of the artist herself, with her dreadlocks and the fact that she has not cut them for 13 years. The fact is that Mabasa only structured this homestead after she had achieved recognition in the high art market and did so in response to the tourists and art fundis who used to, and still occasionally do, pitch up on her doorstep. There is no explanation of why the crocodile can be considered `sacred’, nor why young women without coverings on their breasts are necessarily `nubile’. Is this what is implied when we are then told that, to under­stand the artist we have to `hear her tell’ of where she comes from? But what we hear is Straughan’s re-telling of Mabasa’s tale. There are problems with this as well. The dates which Straughan gives for Mabasa’s

Mabasa at work: the firing process

recognition in the art world, are confusing, starting with an impression that Mabasa was involved with the Goodman Gallery from 1976 (pp. 21, 24), although this is then contradicted. It may be that Noria is confused, but there is a duty on the author to check these things. Then we have bald statements such as that her clay pieces `reflect the rituals and traditions of the VhaVenda peoples, as well as the Shangaan and Zulu cultural traditions present in the commu­nities of the region’ (p. 26, my italics). This simply shows an abysmal lack of understanding of the complexities of the ethnographic data. The description of Venda traditions that follows is painfully generalised, and it is the only Venda ‘ritual’ discussed – and it is only women’s initiation. This is not a representation of Venda culture and it can barely lead one to an intelligible understanding of the Venda-ness of the sculptures. It also ignores, perilously, the fact that Mabasa has access to modern media (television especially) and that she has inter­acted with numerous people from the gallery circuit, academia and collectors. It makes no mention of her trip(s) overseas. It presents Mabasa as a quasi-mythical figure, the ‘primitif’

who has shunned city life in favour of her ancestral world. It may be significant, further­more, that it is only this essay which is translated into French and Nederlands, and not the informative one by Becker, suggesting that those from the European metropole are most interested in the exotic.

Becker’s article, however, situates Mabasa’s practice in the troubled spaces between city and home, between historical tradition and moder­nity, tracing the development of her art within the context of changing patronage in the changing South African political landscape. This essay considers Mabasa’s ethnic origins in a more nuanced way, noting her links to Shang­aan culture, noting the ways in which she exploits ethnicity. Becker also traces a history from Mabasa’s first encounters with the city art world on Tributaries (1985) to the exhibitions of the mid 1990s when her star began to wane, although she has produced many sculptures since. What neither Becker nor Straughan does, however, is to consider really recent work by Mabasa, much of it in the forms of ceramics, although the works from the Venda Village in the Fesheba Wilderness Game Reserve are included under `Major works’, as are some of her pots. An illustration of Mabasa with a large fired pot, unremarked in or by text, speaks volumes about the fact that this book and its authors have simply accepted a very conservative definition of ‘art’ as figurative sculpture, ignoring the fact that the artist makes many more things in clay.

Both authors discuss her work in clay. Straughan recounts both Mabasa’s own version of how she made her first clay figures (notice that she stamped the clay collected by her daughter Joyce), and her working method (notice her particularity about the texture, colour and consistency of the clays), again suggesting their ‘primitiveness’ without naming it: ‘She uses the coil method when making her clay artworks. She has no potting wheel, specialised tools, chemical glaze or electric kiln. Everything is done in the traditional way’ (p. 22).

Becker notes that Mabasa implies that while she learnt to carve from Mukhuba, she did not learn clay techniques from anyone. However, a critical look at this would demand the following questions – how does Mabasa know that she has to stamp the clay, or how to stamp the clay? Does she reinvent the coiling method used by African women in southern Africa for 1 700 years, or does she reinvent this tradition? What exactly constitutes the traditional way that Straughan talks of? Mabasa must have learnt this somewhere. She can, and must, acknowl­edge that she learnt carving from Mukhuba, a man who does what is in his preserve. But clay is within a woman’s possible domain and, claiming a shaman-like status through her dreams, she claims the ability to produce sculptures and large pots in a time-honoured technique through contact with the ancestors. This is part of Mabasa’s own personal auto­myth.

Becker’s analysis of some of the wood sculptures is sensitive to both their formal and iconographic complexity, a complexity that is generally absent from the clay works, which, Becker notes, have a quality of naivety. The disjunction between the expressive form and expressive use of found wood matrices in the wooden works and this simplified naturalism of the clay works is, however, never approached by either author. It would be almost impossible to trace an individual style across both genres. Mabasa’s works in the male medium are very different from those in the female one. Thus it is no surprise that of the seven works listed and discussed (briefly) as ‘major’ only two are clay, and one of these is a collaborative work by the Venda Village at Lesheda. The small-scale figures of police officers, besuited business people, and nurses are not considered major, and there are many others which are not mentioned, such as the multiples of Mpho and Mphonyana, or of the Colonial Couple. These omissions mean that the potentially embarras­sing fact that the criteria of the high art world (in this case the need for once-off originality) were not understood by rural artists can be shunted out of sight without mention.

But Becker’s article raises a number of important issues and discusses them in a manner that redeems the book’s text substan­tially, from the perspective of those who want to understand rather than just to revere. Given that Taxi Art books aim to ‘extend the public profile of South African artists both locally and abroad’ (back cover), one should probably not quibble too much at the tone of the Straughan article, nor at the implicit, conservative view that Noria Maba­sa’s sculpture is art while her pots are not. But the series is also intended to ‘develop an active educational programme and teaching resource archive’ (back cover), and it is here that a proper, informed and critically reflexive approach is sorely missed in the Mabasa book (and in others as well, notably that on Samson Mudzunga).

It is here that the educational supplement comes in. This one, written by Wilhelm van Rensburg, with a contribution by Rayda Becker, offers a more straightforward biography of Mabasa, although with yet a different account and dating of her exposure to the art world. It then proceeds, through a series of worksheets, to raise important issues; from the ways in which different writers construct Mabasa as an artist, through the ‘art versus craft’ debate, the challenge to patriarchy (but not engaging with the fact that Mabasa is not a feminist) and, finally, into issues of spirituality, for which one might also read `tradition’. This invites compar­isons between Mabasa’s works and those by other artists, both those entirely enmeshed in the politics of the gallery circuit and other rurally based artists. But this educational supplement could be used without reference to the Straughan article and would need reference to other sources to make full sense to the teacher or pupils using it. For example, the section on arts and crafts ignores the issues raised by the use of particular media and its links to gender. Needlework, cloth arts and (historically in

Africa) pottery are all gendered as female and are all considered to be ‘craft’ rather than art. Mabasa’s pots are barely mentioned in this book, but her figurative sculptures are; is this because her pots are not figurative? – they certainly are not functional. Her straddling of the divide between art and craft is possible and ‘comfortable’ only because she is relegated to a sphere beyond its rules through the othering mechanisms of writers such as Straughan.

The illustrations in this book display a similar dichotomy to the texts. Some are simply illustrations of sculptures isolated from any context; some, particularly those acquired by large institutions, are placed within the contexts of their present ownership. But a large number are quasi-ethnographic, including elements which place Noria Mabasa and her works firmly within a `different’ environment, one of red mud walls, the verdant green of Venda bush and cultivated fields. A large number are portraits of the artist herself (in the Taxi book on Santu Mofokeng, there is one photograph of the artist, at the end with a date-propelled curriculum vitae), posing with her works, in animated conversation, working on sculptures, preparing food – Why? When this space could well have been used for photographs of other works by the artist, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Noria Mabasa herself has become as much an object of wonder as her sculptures.

That Mabasa is an important contemporary figure in the South African art scene should be acknowledged, but it should be done with a degree of information, a sense of critical evaluation and an understanding of the com­plexity of the issues at stake. The fact that Mabasa is something of an outsider in her own community because of her art production is something that is never broached in this book. The art world is something that Mabasa introduces into the underdeveloped rural area in which she lives and works. But that rural world is part of a larger contemporary world in which all visual forms are susceptible to appropriation by the high art mafia. These visuals and their makers are equally susceptible to being dis­gorged by the art world when their novelty wears thin, as has happened to many rural artists, including, to an extent, Noria Mabasa herself. If the Taxi Art book offers her a new life-line, this should be celebrated. It would have been nice, though, if it had combined celebration with a greater degree of the kind of critical writing and academic rigour found in Becker’s article.

de arte no. 69 (2004)

Keywords: Painting, History, Arts-and-Culture, Design, monograph, Photography, Art, South-African, International, Bookstore