Fiona Siegenthaler: "After the Lure of Transition: Shifting Relationships between Johannesburg Visual Artists and their Subject"

Since its foundation, but even more so in its early years of transformation towards democracy, Johannesburg has attracted young artists of all walks of life as a working place. Very often it also served as a subject for their art work. In diverse media, the artists reflected its post-apartheid look and social realities, the new informal economies and transport systems, and the altered residential pattern of the inner city that evolved through migration from South Africa and neighboring African countries. The artists were fascinated and inspired, interpreting their observations in diverse ways, including utopian and dystopian representations as well as interactive and interventionist engagements with the urban space and its population.

In recent years, however, this interest has faded, and many artists have shifted their focus to small towns, villages or rural areas.

The paper traces this shift in focus in the artists’ interest by discussing the example of three artists. I suggest three main reasons for this shift in interest from the urban to the rural. Firstly, it is related to the implementation of urban regeneration measures, secondly to the artists’ personal biographic situation, and thirdly to a new strategy of funding institutions that support urban-based art practices specifically in rural contexts.

Fiona Siegenthaler is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Basel. A trained social anthropologist and art historian, she is particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches and methods in visual arts, social anthropology and cultural studies. Her PhD thesis Imageries of Johannesburg. Visual Arts and Spatial Practices in a Transforming City was accepted and approved of in March this year by the University of Basel.