The exhibition “What We See. Voice, Image and Versioning” is on at the Iziko Slave Lodge between Thursday 26 February and end May 2009. 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.”

Left: ‘Tjiueza’ by Sanell Aggenbach (2008) Right: Wilfred Tjiueza, photographed by Hans Lichtenecker (1931)

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”.

In the mode of showing a specific example of the symptomatic history of the generation of ways of seeing and depicting people, but at the same time allowing to listen to those people’s response, the exhibition communicates different versions and aspects of the complicated cultural history of “seeing”. Juxtaposing these visual and sonic materials with contemporary art allows for a further “versioning” of the story and its “frozen” portraits of people.

Further, the exhibition suggests – and actually 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”, and 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 indexicality of the photograph, that is, the 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.

Editor's Notes: About the five young southern African artists who have agreed to re-portrait five of the people who were cast

About Anette Hoffmann
Anette Hoffmann was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Programme for the Study of Humanities in Africa at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape from February 2006 until December 2007. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Amsterdam in 2005 with a dissertation on praise poetry in Namibia, and its poetic construction of landscape and identities. She is the curator of the exhibition "What We See" and has edited the book that accompanies the exhibition (Basler Afrika Bibliographien 2009). Currently she is preparing a larger project on the position of voice recordings in the museum, and the position of recorded voices (from former colonies) as an archive of commentaries on visual anthropology, collecting, and colonial history.

About Sanell Aggenbach
The work of Sanell Aggenbach has been a source of inspiration for this exhibition. Her work powerfully engages with ways of seeing people and produces versions of representing people that are at once figurative and distanced, familiar and strange. It seems to put the finger on our racialised sensibilities and thereby allow for a space of critique that confronts the viewer with her/his practice of seeing. In some east African languages, the word for a photographic “negative” is the same as that which signifies a ghost or spirit. Sanell’s paintings (from negatives she found in the van Kalker studios) seem to show the ghostly, mortified side of photographs of unknown (dead?) people. The “photographic real” is questioned by its spectre or shadow, the negative. Her ghostly white, almost transparent, paintings speak to the shadows of the racial framing that haunts the present.

About Mustafa Maluka
Mustafa Maluka lives and works in Finland. He has studied graphic design at the Peninsula Technikon in Cape Town, and fine arts at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. He was the winner of the 2004 Tollman Award for a young artist. In July 2005 he attended a residency at Art OMI in New York. Recent group exhibitions include Cape 07 in Cape Town (2007); the 7th São Paulo Bienal (2006); What Lies Beneath at Galerie Mikael Andersen in Copenhagen, Denmark (2006); Nie Meer at De Warande in Turnhout, Belgium (2006); New Painting at the KZNSA Gallery, Unisa Gallery and Johannesburg Art Gallery (2006) Common Affairs at the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz, Austria (2008), and Inside Out in Berlin (2008).

About Mduduzi Xakaza
The artist Mduduzi Xakaza is a Doctoral Fellow a Programme in the Studies of the Humanities in Africa (PSHA at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape. He holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and is currently writing his PhD thesis on landscape photographs by David Goldblatt and Santu Mofokeng. He is a board member of the National Arts Council. He has participated in various group exhibitions and has held four solo shows in KwaZulu-Natal. His work is represented in various collections in South Africa and abroad.

About Lonwabo Kilani
The artist Lonwabo Kilani lives and works in Cape Town. He studied at the Community Arts Project, and holds a degree in Motion Picture. His work was shown in the group exhibition Questions Of Identity at the South African National Gallery, the Healing And Reparation installation for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as well as a travelling exhibition about the history of Robben Island Museum. He further participated in the bicentenary exhibition on abolition of slave trade in the UK, and South Africa Performs, a South African Arts Festival in Berlin. He had solo shows with the Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, the Association for Visual Arts (Cape Town) and the Greatmore Art Studios (Cape Town).

About Alfeus Mvula
Alpheus Mvula lives and works in Namibia. He is an artist, and holds a degree in art theory. In 2006 he was awarded a DAAD fellowship, in 2007-8 he was artist in residence at the University of Bremen, Germany. He is also chairman of Visual Arts in Namibia (VAN) and co-founder of the Onakazizi Community Project and the Oniipa Art Centre. His work includes murals for the UNESCO in Namibia and in Finland. He had solo exhibitions in Namibia, South Africa, Finland, and Germany, and participated in international group exhibitions.

Images in order of appearance:

• Photograph from Lichtenecker collection: a woman faces a life-cast (Namibia 1931).
• ‘Tjiueza’ by Sanell Aggenbach (2008)
• Wilfred Tjiueza, photographed by Hans Lichtenecker (1931)

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