Public Art in South Africa: Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents (African Expressive Cultures)

Public Art in South Africa: Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents (African Expressive Cultures)

by Brenda Schmahmann (Author), Brenda Schmahmann (Author), Kim Miller (Author)

Synopsis

How does South Africa deal with public art from its years of colonialism and apartheid? How do new monuments address fraught histories and commemorate heroes of the struggle? Across South Africa, statues commemorating figures such as Cecil Rhodes have provoked heated protests, while new works commemorating icons of the liberation struggle have also sometimes proved contentious. In this lively volume, Kim Miller, Brenda Schmahmann, and an international group of contributors examine statues and memorials as well as performance, billboards, and other temporal modes of communication, considering the implications of not only the exposure but also erasure of events and icons from the public domain. Revealing how public visual expressions articulate histories and memories, they explore how such works may serve as a forum in which tensions surrounding race, gender, identity, or nationhood play out.

$50.77

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 392
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 16 Oct 2017

ISBN 10: 0253029929
ISBN 13: 9780253029928

Author Bio

Kim Miller is Associate Professor and holds the Jane Oxford Keiter Professorship of women's and gender studies and art history at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Miller's scholarship, which examines the relationship between visual culture, gender, and power in African arts, includes her forthcoming book, How Did They Dare? Women's Activism and the Work of Memory in South African Commemorative Art.

Brenda Schmahmann is Professor and the South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the University of Johannesburg. She has written, edited, or coedited a number of volumes on South African art, the most recent of which are Picturing Change: Curating Visual Culture at Post-Apartheid Universities and The Keiskamma Art Project: Restoring Hope and Livelihoods.