Education Development Co-lab! Contact
 

TAXI 002 : Samson Mudzunga

Overview | Extract | Sample images | Book details | Dutch/Nederlands | French/Français |

Samson Mudzunga was born in 1938 in Shanzha, Dopeni, in the Nzhelele district of the former Venda "homeland". Although Mudzunga began playing with clay as a child, it wasn't until much later in life that he became a self-sustaining artist, acclaimed for his performance events and for his extraordinary wood carvings, particularly his enormous "coffin drums". Based primarily in the Northern Province, Mudzunga uses Johannesburg as his urban base. He has exhibited on Africus (the first Johannesburg Biennale), and at several galleries in South Africa. A number of his drum pieces are in private and gallery collections.

The book consists of 84 pages with black and white images and a soft cover. The texts in this book were written by Kathy Coates and Stephen Hobbs and have been translated into French and Dutch. Black and white photographs by Kathy Coates, Hannelie Coetzee, Maud Félix- Faure, Stephen Hobbs, Shaka Jamal Redmond and Rodney Place.

An Educational Supplement is published with each TAXI Art Book.

back to top

Extract from the book

Français Nederlands

From the Stephen Hobbs text:

…South Africa today finds itself redressing major differences in language, cultural beliefs and practices, which under apartheid were forced into separate development. As such, gallerists and curators often find themselves having to be highly self-conscious and aware of how easily "Western" ideological frameworks can contribute to the misinterpretation of crossover production. From an urban perspective, Mudzunga is able to seduce his audience by treating them as active participants in the construction of meaning. But the cultural and linguistic differences between Venda and Johannesburg situate a divide - one which I think it is safe to assume exists as much for the artist as it does for his audience. For me the desire to engage those differences is compelling, because Mudzunga as an artist and personality is somehow able to traverse, however briefly, these divergences in language, context, and culture. […]

From the Kathy Coates text:

…It's apparent from these comments that Mudzunga's performative work risks dilution through distance, as well as the misinterpretation that potentially results from its presentation in different contextual frameworks. As Mackenny's comments suggest, his work might indeed be falling into the gap between origin and reception: much as the fascination and importance of this work lies in its straddling of cultural worlds and artistic discourses, the audience which Mudzunga has so carefully cultivated might not be as flexible as the artist himself. For those seeking the "cathartic response" of "authentic ritual" (and here we are in the territory of the romanticising impulse) his performances are bound to disappoint. While Mudzunga might deploy and exploit those discursive modes, he is, in the end, the ultimate devil's advocate: interrogating and using both urban and rural systems, he moves within and between both with subversive intent.

Given the contradictory impulses of Mudzunga's modus operandi, it's not surprising that conflict should emerge as a key dramatic theme in his performances. What makes him a powerful and thought-provoking cultural producer has less to do with the "authenticity" of a particular identity than with his performance of a range of identities: as traditionalist, enlightened rural dissenter, street-savvy urban networker, and so on. Like all canny contemporary artists, Mudzunga strives to link product to performance, insofar as sales of the former financially facilitate the conceptual impetus of the latter. Unlike most contemporary artists, his balancing act occurs at the threshold of two entirely different geopolitical arenas, both of which function as stages for an always shifting conceptual theatre. Both of these spheres are marked by the history of apartheid; both offer unique opportunities for considering the evolving dynamics of that history. Where Mudzunga inserts himself as a magnetic field for all kinds of social energies, we are given the opportunity to learn something of history's complex lessons. […]

back to top

Images from the book


back to top

Details of the book

back to top

Contact David Krut Publishing, for more information or to order any TAXI publications.