Emily on exploring the National Gallery

For my first Saturday back in Cape Town after our excursion to Johannesburg I finally got around to going to the National Gallery to have a look at some South African artwork. When traveling I usually try and visit local galleries early on to get a feel for the local culture and history however visiting the gallery later on proved equally illuminating. When you walk into the national gallery you are greeted with some of the most famous works the building gives a home to, most of which were made by artists who moved away from South Africa or lived in the region for a period of time. The next room is entirely colonial Dutch oil paintings and portraits and is was probably one of the largest galleries in the entire building. It was only after walking through two larger exhibits filled almost entirely with artwork produced by white Europeans that you begin to see the work of South African artists.

           

I found this setup very telling in regards to the history of art in South Africa and how entangled that history is with the history of apartheid. For example, when you begin to walk through the galleries designated for “South African Art,” the room is literally labeled as “South African Art,” whereas when you walk through the galleries dedicated to work by early Europeans in South Africa and foreigners producing work in South Africa it is otherwise labeled. Since visiting the gallery I have been reading up on Dumile Feni, a South African artist who was exiled because most of his sculpture and drawings dealt with the struggle against apartheid. In doing so it has become clear to me that similarly to what I have studied in Latin American art history, people of color were very rarely allowed to explore the arts formally or freely which is probably responsible for the antiquated setup of the National Gallery, but does not make it anymore unsettling.

On top of this it is worth noting that the gallery is housed within the Company Gardens, which it took me a moment to realize are indeed the Dutch East India Company Gardens. The gardens, while beautiful to walk through, also give home to statues and monuments dedicated to the colonial oppressors responsible for so much turmoil. As another jarring symbol of the reality of modern day South Africa, the gardens also play home to a pretty large homeless population forced to sleep and live literally at the feet of monuments to European oppressors. I remain glad that I visited the gallery at this point in my stay here because I do not think I would have been able to pick up on all of these problems and give them proper context earlier on.