CATEGORY ERROR, Bamboo Gallery, Melville, Johannesburg (2009)
Things fall into place
Dimensions: 2.8m X 3.95m
Medium: Rotary print on 100% cotton fabric
Installation: Toile du Jozi fabric wallpaper (3.95m X 2.8m) with bought mirrors found dairy crate and positive power cushion tied on with Chinese bag straps
“African cities shaped by colonial legacy and post colonial period are often presented as dysfunctional and defined in terms of what they lack – order and efficiency. “
The Toile du Jozi design tells the story of an African city rendered in the faded style of a toile du jouy fabric. The story of an African city does not take place inside buildings - the buildings form a backdrop for much of city life happens on the street. Existing structures are used in new ways, imposed order and structures are reinterpreted to find a balance. Transition allows citizens the opportunity to be entrepreneurial and make use of what is available to them.
This textile aims to depict the reconfiguring of a post colonial, African city (like Johannesburg) Urban meets rural, formal meets informal, tradition meets modernity.
I often hear people from previously advantaged communities complaining about systems that no longer work and that “things fall apart.” Yes, Johannesburg has changed since the days when my parents and grandparents would dress up to go shopping in Eloff street.
Toile du Jouy is an optimistic view (some may call it naïve): a picturesque depiction of people going about their daily business in a harmonious and safe city. In the design the edge of European dominance is shown as a fading pattern. Everyday images of Johannesburg street life and traditional toile decoration work together as part of a shared history.
The mirrors placed on top of this textile (wallpaper) encourage viewers who are struggling with finding a legitimate claim to citizenship and belonging in an to adapt, see the beauty, see themselves and fall into place in the African city,
Positive Power Blanket 2
Dimensions: 1.24m X 1.37m
Medium:silver screen-print on 100% regenerated “stormy grey” bought blanket
JANN CHEIFITZ:
If I ruled the world
Dimensions: 1.55m X 1m
Medium: Installation of photographic silkscreen on card stock
‘If I ruled the World’ is a map constructed from the card stock under layers used in my T-shirt production between 2000 and 2006, which bear the imprint and echo of dozens of images scavenged from around the world over time – layered on top of one another to unconsciously document the images that defined my world. Our personal identities, like those of Nation States, are based on multiple, layered identities and affinities – some of which are emphasized, others hidden.
Home Sweet Home
Dimensions: 50cm diametre
Medium: Embroidery cotton on primed canvas stretcher frame
‘Home Sweet Home’ is both a personal and political commentary on a notion that is inherently fluid to me as a child of Africa - whose grandparents came from Eastern Europe, but whose own children are New Yorkers… a cultural product of the British empire both at its centre and its periphery - a South African citizen and a “legal alien” resident of the United States. The piece uses needlepoint to parody domesticity, the words “home” and “sick” both to question the category of “home” and to express a personal and sometimes painful ambivalence.
