Meshac Gaba
Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
‘It is a pity people don’t discuss humour in my work,’ states Meschac Gaba in the square-sized catalogue accompanying his untitled solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), ‘it’s one of the most important aspects.’ A bountiful word, implying a disposition that favours amusement over severity, the noun humour is also deceiving. While gifted with a light-hearted touch, this prolific artist’s first major institutional outing in South Africa is underscored by a contemplative solemnity.
Presented across five rooms, the participatory spectatorship central to Gaba’s show is bracketed by two static displays. The first offers a selection of ten wearable headpieces. Made using artificial hair, these notionally sculptural works are produced by a braiding professional in Gaba’s native Benin, Delphine Bonou. Here each piece references a distinctive South African architectural landmark, including a monument to white nationalism in Pretoria. Part of an ongoing series, Gaba’s Tresses project is more bemusing than overtly amusing, the quirky materiality of his sculptural evocations of architecture and place also monuments to human labour.
Flanked by two sets of large digital prints, these works incorporate Gaba’s architectural icons and face into the established iconography of American and West African currency. These print works are uninspiring, partly because they are tethered to such an obvious politics. Gaba is far more intriguing when he appropriates money as physical material, using it to embellish his headpieces or decorate a series of picture frames.
The latter fill a room titled ‘Couleurs du Cotonou’, also the closing bracket on his show. Similar to Yinka Shonibare, whose fondness for wax print fabrics has a tendency to disguise the impact of his work, the subtleties of Gaba’s ‘Couleurs’ room, filled out with monochrome paintings of repeat motifs, rolls of fabric and empty frames, struggle to assert themselves over the decorative whimsy of his total environment. Gaba’s rectilinear and oval frames, some clustered in groupings, others hung alone, are for the most part empty, enclosing nothing. Significantly, however, they are adorned with a collage of iconography retrieved from West Africa’s ubiquitous CFA francs. Is it even necessary to highlight the artist’s droll temperament here?
The iconography of statehood is visible in many artefacts, not just money, something Gaba deftly explores in his three central rooms. Glue me Peace, shown at Tate Modern in 2005, has seven screens replaying speeches by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The flat-screen perspective of the televisions similarly flattens the history portrayed. Gaba cleverly underscores the stark formality in which the various acceptance speeches were given by locating the work in the Phillips Gallery, an austere room that formerly housed JAG’s impressionist collection.
Similar to Glue me Peace, which invites visitors to leave small annotations of thought and experience, La Maison, a room comprising a large carpeted board game (Ludo), also prompts interactivity. It was quiet when I attended, visitors from the neighbouring high-rises sidestepping the invitation to play (an unknown game?) and heading straight for the Salle de Jeux, another game room. Composed of six tables, the object is to reconstitute the fractured African flags in the slide puzzle game. Even when static, the tables are fascinating. The chaos of colour and line recorded on their surfaces recalls Julie Mehretu’s abstract expressionist maps of imaginary utopias. This is perhaps the charm of Gaba’s work: his ability to modulate jest, to prompt sober reflection, to draw on Africa’s pressing actuality in fashioning a playful imaginary.
Sean O’Toole
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