The exhibition engages with
anthropometric images – that is, the study of human body measurement for
use in anthropological classification and comparison – as a mode of
representation. It furthermore explores the disturbing history of
visualisation that lies at the roots of such images.
“What We See” offers a unique opportunity
to hear indigenous people’s reactions recorded directly after the event of
their early 20th Century casting. It allows one to experience that the
current privileging of sight can be deconstructed: photographs may not
always represent what people understand as “their real selves.” The visual
approach of objectifying and or recognizing the other can be versioned by
narrated identities. It is through unpacking the cultural history of ways
in which we see each other, as well as interrogating the photographic
image in general, that the exhibition allows for an experience that may
question the “real” of what we see, when we look at each other.
“In the way of juxtaposing a case-history
of the colonial production of images of so-called ‘natives’,” says Iziko
Museums of Cape Town Guest Curator Dr Anette Hoffmann, “their voiced and
recorded reactions to this, together with contemporary artworks, the
exhibition reflects on ways of looking at and representing people.”
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The background to “What We See” offers a
clue as to why there is expected to be a high level of interest in the
exhibition: in 1931 the German Hans Lichtenecker set out to produce images
of “vanishing races” in Namibia. Firmly believing in the value of an
archive of “races”, he took life-casts, photographs, hair-samples,
produced colour-samples, but also recordings. The material was thought to
conserve the images, bodily features but also the recorded voices of
“specific races”. By way of producing these “archives of natives”, of
which the Lichtenecker collection is but one example, pictures of
“natives” were constructed and circulated widely – for instance on
postcards and in illustrated anthropological texts – in Africa and in
Europe. In this way, Africans were constructed as exotic “others”. Much
has been said about the colonial gaze, but we rarely have access to the
(voiced) reaction of the so constituted other.
The people who were recorded narratively
represented themselves, their histories, but also articulated protest
against this practice. Additionally the photographs that were taken during
the excursion by Lichtenecker himself, together with his diary, provide an
insight in people’s reaction to anthropometric conduct.
The exhibition shows the history of the
making of the casts with photographs and text, in order to allow for a
critical engagement with this history of visualisation. Further, by way of
making the voices of the speakers audible and understandable through
translations at the exhibition, it enhances our understanding of the
anthropometric praxis – not only as a material result, but as a process
that had an impact of the life of people. The recordings allow the
listener to recognize the speakers as social actors, that is, as people,
instead of as models of and for racial classification. In video interviews
with the descendants of those individuals who were recorded, we hear about
them, their lives and their experiences.
Five young southern African artists – Sanell
Aggenbach, Mustafa Maluka, Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza, Lonwabo Kilani and
Alfeus Mvula – have agreed to re-potrait five of the people who were cast.
These artworks are put into dialogue with the anthropometric images,
voices and videos so as to create a space of “versioning”, where the
visitors may critically review their own practices of seeing self and
others, as well as practices of representation. The dialogue of
contemporary works of young southern African artists, together with the
material of the collection and current memories of the people who were
recorded (this time on video) creates a sense of a “history of the
present”.
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