Visual Controversies in South Africa, Past and Present

In this course,we will track major developments and changes in South African art and media during the Apartheid era (1948-1994) and after (1994-present). The point of this broad historical perspective is not so much to provide a condensed history of South African art and media, as it is to explore the relationship between South Africa’s turbulent socio-political landscape and its visual culture. In particular, we aim to explore the notion of collective national identities as they manifested and still manifest in art and visual culture. The course deals with the concurrent rise of English, Afrikaner and African nationalism in the early 20th century, and the role of visual culture in the construction of these competing identities. The lecture series also deals with the years of the ‘struggle’, when the dominant white construct of nation came into conflict with the rising tide of militant African nationalist aspiratio nwhich culminated in Afropolitanism. The series finally looks at ‘new’ South African nationalism, and the often conflicted art and media it produces.