
Testifying for Humanity
By Adrienne Sichel (The Ar(t)chive)
Central to Mamela Nyamza’s creative arsenal as an accomplished activist artist is her mastery of the power and politics of performance space.
This attribute is only second to this South African dancer-choreographer’s role as a seasoned aesthetic anarchist.
Nyamza’s experimentation with utilitarian, or domestic objects, such as a tin wash bucket, clothing pegs and wash line ( the autobiographical Hatch and Hatched 2007/2010) or a dust bin bearing a raped lesbian body (I stand corrected a collaboration with Mojisola Adebayo, 2012) form part of her choreographic signature. As do real people such as her young son Amkele in Hatched (2010). And real animals like a vicious police dog in the politically satiric 19Born 76 Rebels which premiered at the Avignon Festival in 2013. This outdoor site and culturally specific work then travelled to the 2014 National Arts festival in Grahamstown and to PJ Sabbagha’s My Body My Space public art festival in Machadadorp, Mpumalanga, in 2015.
The park bench in De-Apart -Hate, which is a central focus for this subversively conceptual duet for a woman (Nyamza) and a man, is painted in six colours which evoke the old South African and new South African flag plus the rainbow LGBTQI flag.
In fact when De-Apart-Hate surfaced at the 2016 National Arts Festival Cape Town Fringe Festival, at the Cape Town City Hall, it was billed as public art. In a Facebook posting on September 30 2016 the artist introduces this confrontational piece, which was created in a residency at the University of Maryland at The Clarice Performing Arts Centre, as “Public Art — Hosted by Mamela Nyamza” in celebration of her 40th birthday.
“Currently, the Art in South Africa is besotted with patronage instead of possibilities for all; artists in South Africa cannot even agree among themselves how best to challenge our Government to provide artists of all fields, with equitable resources.
As artists in, we need a discourse that goes beyond “decolonization”, a discourse that moves towards humanity, ubuntu, without being blinded by race and class, a discourse that I call a DE-APARTHEID PROCESS.
“De-Apart- Hate process is thus the most potent weapon to make the oppressor to understand that s/he is just human and not superior over other human beings, and to make the marginalized to understand that s/he is just human, and not inferior.
This requires an …honest dialogue discourse on issues of social, economic and educational systems in South Africa;
“The DE-APART- HATE process is a discourse that starts with the struggles of South Africa as a nation without dwelling on narrow particularities of race and ideology.
Critics might lambast the DE-APART-HATE PROCESS as a discourse that suffers from a romanticiziation of the oppressed and marginalized.
But, the De-Apartheid Process is a true discourse for genuine and effective introspection before re- action.
Performed by Mamela Nyamza and Mihlali Gwatyu, my cousin.
Admission R70.00 i think???
At its South African debut in the City Hall at 4 30 pm on October 8 it struck me how it was evident that Nyamza’s flair for dismantling centuries of racial prejudice and rigorously interrogating such hot potato issues as Western religion, in an African context, twinned with her ability to inventively tackle homophobia and gender politics head on, had ferociously matured.
By the time De-Apart-Hate reached the 2017 Dance Umbrella in the Wits Amphitheatre, in Johannesburg, in February, this intelligently incendiary work impressed eager audiences with its audacity, originality and seasoned artistry.
True to this choreographer’s love for manipulating, co-opting, and then theatrically transforming space, the viewers were greeted at the door by performer Aphiwe Livi singing a hymn. Hint: we were about to become a congregation. A formally dressed-for- African- church, turbaned, Mamela Nyamza followed, also in hymn mode, as a young woman planted in the auditorium beat out the African rhythms on a red leather pillow.
Historically this context and setting has huge resonance for a Gugulethu dancer who as a little girl had her first classical ballet and contemporary training with Zama Dance’s the late Arlene Westergaard and the late CAPAB Ballet star John Simons in a Moravian church in her neighbourhood. The pews were pushed aside for the classes.
Sashaying in silver high heels as she debunks gender and religious stereotypes Nyamza is testifying for humanity, for the dignity and the right to be whoever you are: No Matter What The Scriptures Say.
The construction of this installation style performance (another Nyamza preference) is astute allowing the artists and their audiences to interact, to breathe in the injustices and exhale with defiance, as Nyamza seizes on certain biblical texts and simulates masturbation with a Holy Bible.
How this work will translate to the formality and lack of intimacy of the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre stage at Jomba! 2017 remains to be seen — and no doubt heard. I can’t wait to experience what the unflinchingly courageous Ms Nyamza has to offer eThekwini.
