Abstract
This article contemplates the life and work of the Oxford-based South African artist and activist Gavin Jantjes, born in 1948 when apartheid officially became the law of the land in South Africa with the National Party’s election to power. Because Jantjes’s understanding of his role as an artist took shape in Cape Town in the 1960s, when every aspect of his life was dominated by the racism of the apartheid state, he has questioned both the incongruities of his life and what his role as an artist has meant, establishing himself as an outspoken and imaginative critic of institutionalized racism and other forms of discrimination. Facing the dual obstacles of race and poverty, as well as the pejorative assumption of the Western European modernist canon that Africans lacked the ability to produce meaningful contemporary visual art, Jantjes engaged head on as an artist and activist with tensions between Western modernism and classical African art and the trope of “primitivism” in Eurocentric art historical discourses. This article foregrounds Jantjes’s multiple roles, both in and outside of the studio and gallery spaces, by examining his paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as material related to his curatorial interventions, writings, and formidable publishing efforts, to reveal pivotal moments in his personal and artistic journeys across five distinct yet overlapping phases of his artistic movement from 1970 to 2023.
Published Version
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