CHRIS THURMAN: Exercise in learning how to listen before speaking
Grada Kilomba’s latest exhibition, Speaking the Unspeakable, is centrally concerned with the twin acts of speaking and listening
One day I will tell my son about the life and times of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; one day, but not yet. He loves stories and can process some quite complex narratives for a child his age, but he is, after all, only four. In the meantime, he and I are developing our familiarity with complicated things by visiting art galleries. I should add that this doesn’t happen by design, but by accident (childcare arrangements gone wrong), as was the case this week when the two of us encountered Grada Kilomba’s Speaking the Unspeakable, which is on at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg until April 14. The exhibition is centrally concerned with the twin acts of speaking and listening. This pleased my son tremendously as, although he had been primed to keep his voice to a whisper, the nest of microphones that greeted us at the door seemed to encourage enthusiastic vocal expression. He promptly set about trying them out one by one. The artist’s expressed intention is to ask the questions, "Who can...
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