‘Brutal and tragically beautiful’ – guest lecturer reflects on UP Museums ‘Homage to Pretoria’ art exhibition

Modern Pretoria would be unimaginable without the Union Buildings, but their physical and symbolic dominance of the city raises uncomfortable questions and stirs up mixed feelings among its inhabitants. For some, the buildings and the city itself are symbols of pride and accomplishment; for others, they represent oppression and loss.

Small wonder, then, that the Union Buildings loom large over the Homage to Pretoria: Narratives from the University of Pretoria Museum art collection exhibition that ran at the University of Pretoria's Javett Bridge Gallery from May to October 2024.

Like the exhibition itself, the Union Buildings evoke ambivalence and dichotomies. Bongani Njalo, an award-winning artist and the Cultural Programs Coordinator for the Goethe-Institut South Africa in Johannesburg, noted this in a guest lecture at the museum gallery on 14 October.

"I was intrigued by the jarring focus on this iconic building, which is perched on the highest point in Pretoria, completed in the same year of the signing of the 1913 Land Act - a sour point in the history of the majority of this land."

Pretoria through the lens of the white male gaze

Njalo said he had been struck by how the first part of the Homage to Pretoria exhibition presented the birth and documentation of Pretoria through "the lens of the white male gaze".

Not only were the Union Buildings designed by a white male architect, Sir Herbert Baker, but their construction was sketched and painted by another white male, the artist JH Pierneef, whose work featured in the exhibition, which spans the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries.

This white male gaze had "egged on my curiosity to wonder about the inhabitants of this land prior to the establishment of Pretoria as we know it today", Njalo said, noting that the southern Ndebele groups in particular had inhabited the land for centuries.

The initial monofocal lens of the exhibition makes way for a nuanced and colourful unfolding of Pretoria by a diverse array of South African artists, many of them women, including Elizabeth Rampa, Henriette Ngako and Diane Victor.

"We are drawn into varied moments of reflection upon South African feminist movements, the black labour struggles, migration, religion and African tradition, heroism and savagery - as opposing forces tried to lay their claims to the land through bloodshed and great upheaval to realise varied political power shifts across the times," Njalo said.

He added that anyone seeking to understand the city and its place in the collective South African imagination could not shy away from its "brutal and tragically beautiful" history.

"While there are parts [of the exhibition] which I found triggering for political reasons, there are also parts in which I found joy and great resonance, be it through my religious upbringing and memories of my grandmother and the significance of maternal care in this country, to parts of healing and humour and sometimes dark parts of South African playfulness."

Provocations and uncomfortable truths

Describing Homage to Pretoria as being "layered with provocations that unearth new inquiries within us all", Njalo said its symbols and symbolisms related to ownership and the history of power in South Africa had made him hyper-aware of where he was standing - within the University of Pretoria. This was "a place where my forefathers were once not afforded opportunities besides scrubbing the floors and the lavatories, where they were denied access, let alone for their voices to be heard at some point in history".

Thus, the exhibition stimulated debate and foregrounded "confrontational truths about who we are as inhabitants of this newly born state which is constantly in flux and conflict with itself".

He challenged his fellow artists and curators to consider how artists shape the vision and discourse of their desired reality. "How do we tell a new and different story of who we are while accepting our past with all its flaws and dark history?"

Uthando Baduza, Curator of Art Exhibitions and Galleries for UP Museums, said he and co-curator Gerard de Kamper had deliberately included works reflecting the construction of the city through the hegemony of the white male gaze. "It is important for us to interact with the dominance of that gaze," he said, adding that an equally deliberate attempt had been made to include works that had had little exposure or were by Pretoria-based artists who had not received due recognition.

"This has emerged as a key research question going forward: How does the university commit resources to ensure that adequate research is done on artists that have worked and practised in the margins? How can we produce credible knowledge about these artists that can make a tangible contribution to the South African art historical canon?"

The exhibition closed on Friday 18 October 2024, but will be accessible online virtually through the UP Museum platform on Google Arts & Culture within the next few months.

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