Nontsikelelo Veleko - Wonderland

Opening address for 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner – Nontsikelelo Veleko at the Durban Art Gallery 20th November 2008

When I first saw Lolo’s pictures at the Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition in Grahamstown there were a few things that struck me – one of these was the installation of the garden with its fake grass, artificial flowers and a swing which is remininiscent of the famous painting of the same name by French painter, Fragonard. Then I was told that someone had come into the exhibition and asked who had died – he thought the artificial; flowers, grass etc were a funeral memorial. This in itself was a question or a perception, which was quite significant in that the exhibition title “Wonderland” suggests the story of Alice whose world was turned upside down when she fell into a rabbit hole after following a white rabbit with a watch. The tale plays with logic and normal expectations and maybe the photograph of the European castle set up for a Christmas display in Durban’s nearby Gugu Dlamini Park sets this theme. She has created the set-up to read like a reflection in the water but look closer and you can see that that is not what it is. The people have morphed into different people, the clouds are in a different position so we are confused – what is real and what is not real? And maybe this says something about her work in general. What is fashion? Do we show our real selves or is a way to construct an identity? Those private spaces in offices, bedrooms, bathrooms – are they more revealing of the creator than how the person represents him/herself in public? And so – her boundaries – like the city backdrops, which sometimes fade into the distance – are fluid and the exhibition interrogates all this.




Gugu Dlamini Park, Durban, KwaZulu Natal,2007

I find her fashion photographs the most interesting and I was particularly struck with what I thought was some relationship with the photos taken in the late nineteen fifties and sixties by a Durban photographer working in the Grey Street area called Bobby Bobson. I will spend a few minutes talking about him. He had this little studio and many of the itinerant, mostly black urban workers used to frequent his business to have their portraits taken, mostly to send home to their families. His speciality was the studio portrait and he had a choice of backdrop – some were mountain scenes looking like the Swiss Alps – others were maybe forests or other exotic locales. He also had a set of props – these included telephones, artificial flowers, and a variety of costumes consisting mostly of traditional beaded aprons, belts and so forth from which the clients could choose to dress up and some wonderful combinations were put together. So the photo usually depicted someone dressed in traditional Zulu gear with a mix of their everyday modern clothes and looking as if they were in some foreign exotic paradise like the Alps.




Lindiwe Ntlebi, Kliptown, Johannesburg, Gauteng
2007

If we think about this, and start to unpack it, what it says is that urban people then were wishing themselves to be depicted as somewhere else – their rural outfits, with the symbols of modernity, like telephones, and then set against this foreign landscape, whilst all the time living and working in Durban. I am sure you see where I am heading in this. When we look at Lolo’s images of young, urban, trendy people there is a sense of their claiming the city spaces which were for so long as distant and unreachable as the Alps to them. The city centre of Durban, like the rest of the country, was set up by the white settlers in the early part of the 20th century and everyone else was banished to the outskirts of the city with curfews making sure they were not around after dark. The cafes, shops, etc. did not allow or welcome people of colour who felt excluded and uncomfortable and they became outcasts. And this is where Veleko’s work is making such a strong comment. Here we see young people of all colours in the most trendy fashions. Her grasp of style and fashion is part of what interests her however it is the situating of these people in the context of the major cities of the country that is important to her work. She selects and approaches her subjects, which is a different process from the commissioning of a photographer or the usual documentary style chronicling of events that have been so prevalent in South Africa. Her work is neither of these. There is a negotiation between subject and photographer. It is clear that they are all confident in their gaze and meet the photographer and ultimately the viewer on a direct and equal basis. These, mostly young, people are claiming their space – they are in fact triumphant in their sense of belonging. We just know there are no more curfews or ghettos. The artist has expressed, through these portraits, a sense of belonging and ownership particularly of the city.




Face of Darfur, Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg, Gauteng
2007

This examination of city life also extends to her photographs of graffited walls, which are also symbolic of the claiming of public space. By photographing these impermanent and spontaneous marks on walls she is bringing them to a new status – they now become serious artworks which are viewed in the sequestered space of the gallery and become movable, tradable works of art instead of site-specific. What started off as a subversive act now becomes co-opted into the realm of serious gallery spaces. City officials may paint over the walls but she has preserved them for posterity. It could be considered to be another link in a chain of subversive acts.




Wafak’ingoma Phakathi Kwam, Umdloti, KwaZulu Natal
2007

There is a similar sensibility evident in her photographs of interiors – generally personal and private areas whose collection of objects and works are unselfconsciously created for a space not meant for public consumption. Now they are also part of a different context being viewed as something else and drawing attention to a different sort of process. The private now becomes public and so she inverts and subverts all expectations of what is public, what is private and where it is permissible to show what. The hallowed spaces of the gallery now become a showcase for what is usually shown in spaces not meant for this particular context.

It is indeed a Wonderland, which Veleko has opened up for us – a world which interrogates surfaces and expectations and where the miraculous now appears normal.

Carol Brown