Abstract
M.Tech. (Fine Art)
The focus of this research is an exploration of aspects of liminality and how it manifests in selected unsanctioned public art interventions in ‘urban places’, specifically, the Johannesburg Central Business District. Liminality informs my own art work and to contextualise my practice I investigate Steven Cohen’s performance/intervention entitled Chandelier (2001-2002), and Alison Kearney’s The Portable Hawkers Museum (2003). I argue that unsanctioned public art maintains a liminal identity, a fluidity of ‘repurposing a space’ that is in constant shift between different dimensions of liminality. Such works create a zone between physical and conceptual space, challenging the relationships between people and places, the artist and the audience. Liminal spaces (such as the underside of bridges for example) provide the platform for new mediation to happen outside of the normal social structures. Homi Bhabha (1994:54) refers to this as a “third space” where transformation may occur, and it is this transformation of space and experience that I aim to explore in my work.
In my practical component I present a body of unsanctioned public art interventions consisting of ceramic sculptures placed in urban liminal spaces in Johannesburg. I populate the chosen spaces with imaginative objects that playfully reflect my own cultural hybridity, and resultant liminal existence, in a post-colonial urban society. My practical work thus draws on analyses of the liminal aspects of Cohen and Kearney’s works as well as on aspects of my hybrid existence arising from my status as an immigrant in Johannesburg. Through my art works I attempt to engage with the local inhabitants without the restrictions of institutionalised arenas, allowing for a new experience of both the space and the artwork. Finally I record my own interventions in detail and compile an annotated photographic catalogue to document the sculptures in situ and the ephemeral life span of these unsanctioned public art interventions.