A STATEMENT I WROTE LAST WEEK ABOUT EXHIBIT B:
A petition that has gained thousands of signatures in the UK is calling for a performance piece of mine, EXHIBIT B, to be withdrawn from presentation at the Barbican, London.

I stand for a global society that is rich in a plurality of voices. I stand against any action that calls for the censoring of creative work or the silencing of divergent views, except those where hatred is the intention.

The intention of EXHIBIT B is never hatred, never fear, never prejudice. It is love, respect and outrage.

I appreciate that interpretations of this piece, as of any creative work, can vary; and that my intention to explore the machinations of systems of racism and how they dehumanize all who are touched by them can be read in different ways. I do not portray the world in the binaries of black and white, wrong and right, good and evil. I am an artist that works with colours and shades. The fury around EXHIBIT B is generated in large part by photographs of the work and on a sensationalistic article in a UK national paper that has many exaggerations and inaccuracies, and on the resulting social media hysteria. Decontextualized from a multi-dimensional performance work, 2-dimensional images can never communicate the colours and shades of the work.

EXHIBIT B has played at many of Europe’s most prestigious festivals (and in South Africa). Between 20 000 and 25 000 people have attended it. It has been lauded by white, black and brown audiences and critics for the powerful stance it takes against racism, the dehumanization and objectification of black people, and the sanitization of the brutalities of European colonialism.

Those who have launched the petition call EXHIBIT B racist. They are challenging my right, as a white South African, to speak about racism the way I do. They accuse me of exploiting my performers. They accuse me of a simple reiteration of stereotypical images of oppressed black people. They insist that my critique of the human zoos and the objectifying, dehumanizing colonial/racist gaze is nothing more than a recreation of those spectacles of humiliation and control. They brand me a white supremacist, a “far-right neo-Nazi boer”.

Viewpoints differ. The signatories of the petition insist that their viewpoint is correct. That EXHIBIT B should be denied a platform. The vast majority of them have not attended the work.

In EXHIBIT B there are 12 stages, tableaux vivants or installations. In each of them a performer physically characterises an objectified human being. Rather than portraying “the native in his natural surrounds” as human zoos did, each installation shows the brutality done to asylum seekers in the EU or inflicted upon colonial subjects. In some cases I use the scenography of cages and display cabinets to demonstrate the callous framing devices of the colonial order. In others I create shrines of remembrance to honour these people. Each installation has an accompanying text that describes – in the language of anthropological or art gallery exhibits – each scenario and outlines its historical context.

Some of the commentators on social media sites assert that EXHIBIT B is not art at all; that it is merely a dressed-up embodiment of hate-speech, and that the demand for its suppression is thus not arts censorship. Tell that to the 14 arts festivals, theatres and galleries that have presented the work, and the dozens of arts critics and commentators that have covered it.

The colonial project strove to suppress and silence the voices of the peoples it colonized. The dominant orders in many European and other countries today impose the same on their minorities. I made an artistic choice not to give speech to the characters of EXHIBIT B as I feel that silence is a more powerful demonstration of the dehumanizing brutality of the systems that I am exposing. The petition and protests organised by those who oppose this work are a very real demonstration that there is no more place for silence: they are the perfect counterpoint to the work. A revolution against suppression continues to occur.

My critics condemn my choice of silence in EXHIBIT B as tyrannical and as further evidence of my racism. And yet these same critics want to suppress my work and silence my voice.

EXHIBIT B is not primarily a work about colonial-era violence. Its main focus is current racist and xenophobic policies in the EU and how these have evolved from the scientifically legitimised and state-sanctioned racism of the late 19th century. These policies do not exist in historical isolation. They have been shaped over centuries. The dehumanizing stereotypes of Otherness instilled in the consciousness of our ancestors have been transmitted subconsciously and insidiously through the ages. EXHIBIT B demands that we interrogate representations that to so many people still appear innocent.

It is alleged that the work merely regurgitates images of past racial brutality and says nothing about black people today: of the 12 installations, 4 speak of the state violence done to immigrants in EU countries right now. One of these refers to the 14 immigrants and asylum seekers who have been murdered in the EU by border police on deportation flights since 1991.

“EXHIBIT B is a human zoo!” claim online commentators. In my opinion the dozens of superficial happy, singing, dancing, drumming spectacles that tour around the world presenting beaming Africans in skins and feathers are the real human zoos of this era, selling the well-worn myth of the exotic, untroubled, foot-stomping Dark Continent.

Colonial policies of plunder and genocide were hidden behind wordy veneers of altruistic civilization: “the white man’s burden”. The red hand of colonialism has always been cloaked in beauty in order to conceal its true nature. Museums and galleries that valorise colonialism are filled with aesthetic depictions of colonized peoples grateful for their salvation from “barbarism” by “benevolent” settlers. In EXHIBIT B I employ these two layers – violence and beauty – in order to reveal their historic interplay. Many of the detractors of the work read this as a racist aestheticisation of the violence inflicted on black bodies. Again, without the presence of living, watching performers, the work is flattened and reduced by its representation in media photographs.

I am accused of exploiting the performers of EXHIBIT B. The implication is that those who opt to perform in the piece lack agency.

In every city that I present the work I audition 40 people. They attend the auditions in 5 groups of 8 people each. I discuss my intentions with them. I tell them about where I come from and who I am: I speak of 27 years of my life in which the media, government, schoolteachers, clergy, family affirmed the segregationist narrative of apartheid. I talk about human zoos, social Darwinism, European imperialism, brutality and plunder. I talk about the current policy of the EU towards immigrants. About racial profiling, holding camps and deportations. I show them a film of EXHIBIT B. I discuss with them the physical and emotional challenges of the work. I put it to them that I am not looking for people who simply need a job, but for people who want to engage with the issues that the work tackles. I inform them that the piece is controversial and that they need to be able to defend their participation. I describe how transformative it has been for those who have performed in the piece. I ask who of them want to participate, and from those candidates I make my selection.

In the rehearsals I emphasize that the performers need to find their own inner meaning in the work. We work on portraying the character that they are playing in a way that will bring dignity to this person from whom dignity was stripped. The body might be trapped, contained, framed: the spirit never. The rehearsals include exercises in endurance, self-awareness and meditation. There is a lot of care, coaching and compassion.

I have testimonies from many of the 150 or so performers – who come from all walks of life, class and professional status – about how valuable, enriching and empowering the experience has been. These people have no agency, say the critics: they are performing because they need a buck.

The listed components of each installation (Mixed media) include “spectator/s”: the installation is only completed by the presence of the spectator: the installation is not about the cultural or anatomical difference between the colonial subject and the spectator, it is about the relationship between the two. It is about looking and being looked at. Both performer and spectator are contained within the frame.

But who is actually the spectator within this scenario? Each of the performers is given 2 basic directions: to sit or stand absolutely still for the duration of the performance, and to watch the spectators at all time. I ask them to envision themselves as the spectators watching the audience performing the role of the lookers.

It has not been my intention to offend people with this work. To challenge perceptions and histories, yes. Explicitly to offend: no. But I work in difficult and contested territory, territory that is fraught with deep pain, anger and hatred. There are no clear paths through this territory. The terrain is littered with landmines. Does that mean that as an artist I should not enter? I am a white South African who spent my first 27 years living under a detestable regime of racism – albeit on the side of privilege. As an artist I continually reflect in my work on that system and its ramifications and implications. I will not make anodyne works that pander to status quos, and that do not confront people with realities that it is all to easy to leave festering in the dark.

Do any of us really want to live in a society in which expression is suppressed, banned, silenced, denied a platform? If my work is shut down today, whose will be closed down tomorrow?