Abstract
This article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the South African artist Penny Siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, My Lovely Day, and a related object installation entitled Reconnaissance (1900-1997). In each work, Siopis traces the course of her grandmother’s emigration from Europe to Africa through a variety of found, collected, or inherited components that bore witness to the longue durée of imperialism and Apartheid. Mediating between national, cultural, and familial narratives, these works are inherently archaeological in nature, and allowed viewers at the time to reflect on the multiple entangled histories that comprised the post-Apartheid condition. The late nineties in South Africa were defined by the conclusion of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art. The decade thusly saw a stream of collective efforts to both unearth the past and envision the future, marking a time of great cultural, artistic, political, and discursive transition. Mapping questions of medium-specificity and affect over this larger context, I investigate Siopis’ use and manipulation of historical traces as well as notions of contemporaneity and temporality in her art.
Highlights
This article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the South African artist Penny Siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, My Lovely Day, and a related object installation entitled Reconnaissance (1900-1997)
The late nineties in South Africa were defined by the conclusion of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art
Framing the Biennale around the thematic scope of its title, Trade Routes: History and Geography, Enwezor commissioned and selected works that spoke to various types of migrations: of people, commodities and ideas.[3]
Summary
Siopis did not forge her career as a moving-image artist. In the 1970s and 1980s, she worked primarily in the mediums of painting, drawing, and pastel, and her art was characterized by a figurative style that made heavy use of iconography and allegory. In 1996, Siopis was one of several artists targeted by Enwezor in a controversial essay entitled “Reframing the Black Subject: Ideology and Fantasy in Contemporary South African Representation,” which sparked heated debates about identity, appropriation and visual culture in South Africa.[20] Enwezor insisted that white artists should stop reproducing narratives and images related to the oppression of Africans in their work, and instead might take on their own experiences and histories as subject matter His censure relies on an acknowledgment of the lasting power of such representations; as noted by Andrés Mario Zervigón, “images remain haunted by their previous use even while charged with their new task of renegotiating identity.”[21] Enwezor argues that the utter familiarity of racist tropes, such as those found in ethnographic postcards, is evidence of their lasting currency, and enlists the words of postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and Franz Fanon in decrying the depictions of “near-naked African women in a state of colonial arrest”[22] reproduced in works by Siopis and Candice Breitz, among others. I hope to hold in suspension the metaphor of Tutu’s call to “unearth” the past as I discuss the contents of My Lovely Day and Reconnaissance (1900-1997) and shift to an analysis that concerns the affect and agency of found images and objects, as well as their resonance within the post-Apartheid contexts outlined above
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
