(DOWNLOAD) "The Trauma of Conceptualism for South African Art." by Critical Arts # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: The Trauma of Conceptualism for South African Art.
- Author : Critical Arts
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 204 KB
Description
Abstract In this article I argue that the history of South African art after apartheid depends on a conceptual armature that privileges a certain relationship, or intimacy, with the experience of othering, because of the long history of apartheid and colonialism to which the country was subjected. I discuss the ways in which these histories and epistemological terms resonate with and change the particular history of contemporary South African art. In particular, I present a case for a re-viewing of recent South African art history, in the context of the idea that much of the meaning and impact of conceptual art has been supplanted by the impact and function of terrorism in contemporary society, which affected South Africa directly in the last years of apartheid. I argue for a general case of terrorism replacing the normal function of conceptualism in art--that of aesthetic destabilisation or defamiliarisation. Further, I posit that in the case of South African art this is complicated by the country's position as a postcolony, and therefore it is in an agonistic relationship to perceived imperialist versions of art history. In particular, I question the idea of a contemporary South African postcolonial subjectivity, framed in terms of both an opposition to its position of otherness vis-a-vis the Western arthistorical paradigm, and in terms of its position as part of the mythology of a newly created nation-state.
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