HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: Global angle shows absence of colonial sunset clause
‘Artist Kapwani Kiwanga renders an overdue public service by quietly and effectively destroying pretty sunsets’
I am a sunsets guy. It drives my wife insane. Whether at home or on holiday, driving in traffic, sitting on a beach or traipsing along a litter-strewn pavement — when the afternoon light starts shifting into evening, I get all distracted and gaze longingly westward. Sometimes I take photos. Sometimes I wax lyrical. Sometimes I injure myself or other people because I’m lost in reverie. Sunsets are pretty, but people gushing about sunsets are pretty annoying. So Kapwani Kiwanga has rendered an overdue public service by quietly but nonetheless effectively destroying such twilight indulgence. Before I visited Kiwanga’s The Sun Never Sets at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, I knew that some sunsets are tainted; the pyrotechnic display of colour to which Gauteng’s residents are regularly treated, is partly attributable to air pollution.But the video installation after which Kiwanga’s exhibition is named planted a seed of doubt in my mind that is not ecological but political. I will no...
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