HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: Stories of failed states and whitewashed victims
‘Kudzanai Chiurai’s images are so richly allusive, so vivid, they spark a revision of the relationship between the past and future’
Kudzanai Chiurai’s latest exhibition, We Live in Silence, comprises two parts: four new films (to be launched at Constitution Hill this weekend) and broadly derived from them, a series of prints, paintings and installations (which opened at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg last week). The split sites and differing durations of these two components suggest that they may be assessed and interpreted independently. This also affords the pleasure of changing opinions, of alternative insights; next week, once I have seen the films at Constitution Hill, I am sure my understanding of the material displayed at the Goodman Gallery will shift. For now, I am struck by the silence of the still images — dramatic scenes frozen into motionless tableaux. In particular, there is the ambiguous gaze of Botshelo Motuba, who portrays the central "character" in most of Chiurai’s arrangements. She stares directly at the camera and thus at the artist as well as the viewer; she is simultaneously a part of, and r...
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