The Venda exhibition shows objects in-between the holy, the everyday, the political, the touristically colonialized and contemporary art, displaying art from the Venda cultural group that lives mainly in the northernmost Limpopo province of South Africa.
Exhibition Concept & Design @ Venda, Museum voor Volkenkunde, Rotterdam, 1 May 1994
The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (known as the Museum of Ethnology until 2000), located in the city of Rotterdam in South Holland, is a museum dedicated to cultures of the past and present. It is the successor to the Museum of Agriculture and Ethnology and is situated at the corner of Veerhaven and Willemskade. It displays ethnographic objects from various cultures in Asia (including Islamic heritage), Oceania, Africa, and the Americas.
In 2023, the museum was renamed the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam because it, along with the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal, became part of the National Museum of World Cultures.
Artists
> Paul Tavhana
The exhibition at the Rotterdam Museum voor Volkenkunde (now known as the Wereldmuseum) was curated by the art historian and ethnographer Erna Beumers who after visiting a large number of artists in Venda, selected works by Noria Mabasa, Johannes Maswanganyi, Goldwin Ndou, Owen Ndou, Freddy Ramabulana, Philip Rikhotso, Phutuma Seoka, and Paul Tavhana.
Venda
The artists belong to the Venda people (also known as the Bavenda or Vhavenda), a composite people formed from the historic amalgamation of various groups that migrated south from Central Africa across the Limpopo. Sharing historical and ancestral links with the ancient Mapungubwe Kingdom (which flourished until about 1300) they consolidated the Venda Kingdom in the 1700s.
The Venda were famously the last black nation in South Africa to fall under European colonial control, utilizing heavily fortified, inaccessible mountain strongholds in the Soutpansberg range.
During the Apartheid regime, a part of their land was designated as an independent homeland (the “Republic of Venda”) from 1979 until it was peacefully dismantled and returned to democratic South Africa in 1994.
Venda are a distinct cultural and linguistic minority in South Africa with their own language and traditions. Revering ancestral spirits and their own supreme deity, the traditional Venda culture is deeply interconnected with the sacred geography of the region, with places like Lake Fundudzi and the Holy Forest being treated with immense respect.
Radio
The exhibition celebrated the end of the institutionalized racial segragation system of Apartheid in South Africa with the first fully-multiracial election and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the country’s first Black president, and the full integration of Venda into the democratic South Africa in 1994.
With speakers attached to the chairs, the exhibition included a compilation from radio and video recordings from South Africa.
0:00 – 0:04
Man: News of South Africa……..News of South Africa……..News of South Africa……..
0:04 – 0:34
Woman: No more, no more, no more apartheid, Mandela is our President!
Man: Why that song particularly?
Woman: I am kind of singing now Sir. Uh?
Man: Why that song particularly?
Woman: Because I feel happy. Today is the day that I can be able to express myself the way I feel. No more, no more, no more apartheid, no more no more, Mandela is our President! No more, no more, no more…
0:34 – 1:33
MC Mabasa and The Shigombe Sisters: Va Fundhisi
MC Mabasa, is a legendary South African Xitsonga musician known for his work in the traditional Xitsonga (Tsonga) music genre.
For decades, he has collaborated extensively with the backing vocal group The Shigombe Sisters (also spelled Xigombe Sisters).
Tradition
The Venda people have practiced the tradition of wood-carving since time immemorial, manifesting this art form in utensils for daily utility, court paraphernalia and ritual objects. One example of such ritual objects are the large drums that are used during Venda’s initiation ritual “Domba”.
Traditionally art in Venda was tightly bounded within society and considered a sacred practice. Artists were believed to be mandated by ancestral spirits through dreams and visions, giving them a spiritual status in the community equal to traditional healers (ngangas).
Political
Whilst the artistic tradition of the region previously focused almost entirely on depictions of water spirits, ancestors, and initiation rites, the advent of the apartheid government’s designation of Venda as an “independent homeland” in 1979 prompted a shift in artistic expression.
Artists then began using their traditional mediums to critique the harsh realities around them, with sculptors carving or molding figures of apartheid policemen, military personnel, and colonial bureaucrats.
With these subversive responses to the apartheid regime, traditional Venda art underwent a significant transformation, shifting from a state of sacred, localized functionalism to one of highly political, internationally recognized fine art during in the 1980s.
Contemporary
This transformation of Venda art occurred through a confluence of commercial opportunity, as white urban collectors and global galleries suddenly expressed immense interest in the raw, mythologically vivid style of Venda sculptors.
Encouraged by buyers and traders, some artists started experimenting with novel subjects, letting their imagination run free. The accelerating social and political changes engendered a plethora of situations requiring new artistic responses and the sculptural tradition with the diverse local woods and classical tools proved sufficient malleability to facilitate the expanding repertoires.
A commodification process was facilitated by the emergence of cultural tourism, whereby master artists transitioned from merely supplying local traditional healers to actively operating open-air studios, sharing their knowledge with international tourists and passing down hybrid, modern-traditional styles to a new generation of Venda youths.
Publication, The storytelling art of the Venda, by Paul Faber @ Museum Magazine Vitrine, Rotterdam, 1 August 1994
Publication, The storytelling art of the Venda, by Paul Faber @ Museum Magazine Vitrine, Rotterdam, 1 August 1994
Concept
&
Design
Publication, The storytelling art of the Venda, by Paul Faber @ Museum Magazine Vitrine, Rotterdam, 1 August 1994
Trans
Form
Nation
The Venda exhibition concept and design (by Hybrid Space Lab) entitled “Trans Form Nation” created a space of communication.
The obects were not isolated on individual pedestals but placed all together on an accessible platform.
The exhibition setup consisted of a floating and accessible platform, pierced and supported by industrially produced second hand chairs.
A large pictogram on the wall encouraged visitors to access the platform. As the floating platorm covered the largest part of the exhibition space, visitors were actually obliged to mount.
At the start of the exhibition opening, visitors were crammed in the limited space around the platorm until a child climbed on it – and everybody followed.
The exhibition setup enabled the communication between the museum visitors climbing on the inverted MDF pedestal, the stories of the sculptures, the stories of the chairs, the sounds, and the bits and rests and traces of information on /under/next /between the artefacts.
The encounter of disregarded, mass-produced chairs and the artisanal Venda sculptures floating on their industrial MDF-aura created a space of communication, fostering new relationships for hospitality and meeting!
The design strategy dealt with the unknown quantity of objects coming by boat from Africa to be on display; providing maximum possibilities, letting the objects “find their place”, fostering new relationships.
Exhibition design materials: MDF, 35 industrial mass-produced second hand/found chairs, 80 clamps, ultramarine blue paint, blackboard paint, chalk and graphite.
Venda art: in-between the holy, the everyday, the political, the touristically colonialized and contemporary art.
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