Abstract
There has been a shift in curatorial practice internationally whereby the curator-as- creator, or contemporary curator, is now seen as the art object’s instigator, working with artworks to create meaning. Although interest in curatorial discourse became apparent relatively late in South Africa, accelerated by the dissolution of apartheid and the end of the cultural boycott, I contend that the mega-exhibitions of the late 1980s and 1990s, particularly Tributaries: A View of Contemporary South African Art (1985); Africus: Johannesburg (1995); Trade Routes: History and Geography (1997); Miscast: Negotiating Khoisan History and Material Culture (1996); and Africa Remix: Art of a Continent (2007), were seminal in prompting critical interest in curatorial practice. I discuss how a number of curators in Johannesburg have been reconceptualising their strategies and roles, particularly the shift towards maintaining independence, which I argue was prefigured by these early mega-exhibitions. By analysing curatorial projects and the role of the curator practising in Johannesburg between the years 2007 and 2016, I show that a number of curators have gained the strategic ability to navigate challenges and/or limitations related to socio-cultural, political, or economic imperatives by remaining independent of institutional policy and/or conventional conceptions of curatorial practice. I show how autonomous Johannesburg curators have reconceptualised the conventions of producing, installing, exhibiting and viewing exhibitions, which they do by adopting independent roles that I categorise as: (1) the nomadic curator, (2) the curator-as- artist/artist-as-curator, (3) the curator engaging in collaborative curatorial practices, (4) and the curator-gallerist. Despite some western curatorial strategies having inflected Johannesburg curatorial practices, I suggest that local curators are not simply importing these ideas, but have adapted and reinterpreted them in ways that have enabled exhibitions to respond to social injustice and concerns around inclusion and exclusion; probe socio-political legacies; and bypass problems such as the lack of infrastructure and scarcity of funding and resources in Johannesburg.
Ph.D. (Art History)