Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - May 14, 2006
Zingi Mkefa

Entitled Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa, it features some 250 works by the likes of South Africans Penny Siopis, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Jackson Hlongwane, William Kentridge, Kendall Geers, Steven Cohen, David Goldblatt and Clive van den Berg. It also includes pieces from the rest of the continent.

There is not a European oil painting in sight.

According to curator Fiona Rankin-Smith, the exhibition primarily comprises works collected by Wits University and Standard Bank since 1978.

"The idea for the exhibition," she explains, "originated from a conference co-ordinated by Wiser [the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research] on the subject of faith.

"Deborah Posel [director] of Wiser approached me and asked if I could curate an exhibition on this theme. I was only too happy to do it."

However, there was a problem. At the time, August 2005, the Wits Art Gallery was closed.

But shortly afterwards, Standard Bank invited Rankin-Smith to suggest ideas for an exhibition in its gallery. Figuring Faith seemed an ideal choice.

The broad nature of the topic inspired Rankin-Smith to group the artworks into themes, which include confession and catharsis, redemption and salvation, the missionary gaze, and death and revelations.

Sculpture, paintings, installations, video work and animation are categorised, somewhat loosely at times, into these themes and touch on experiences of worship and ritual, body modification and decoration, religious clothing, ancestor worship, death and dying and the impact of the HIV/Aids pandemic.

Geers's aggressive HIV+has two huge portraits of a priest separated by a red panel to which batons have been attached as if they are treasured weapons in a display cabinet.

Below, in large black letters, is written "Confession".

A statement on the role of religion in the bloodshed this planet has endured, it is a potent piece.

Hentie van der Merwe's text-based work recounts the statements of people living with HIV or who have died of complications related to Aids.

The work raises the painful reality of people who die on this continent believing that using condoms is against their religion.

Siopis also highlights the dark side of religion and faith. Her installation, Good Faith, is housed in a glass cabinet at the entrance to the gallery.

In it she has packed religious paraphernalia - a statue of Mother Mary, a page from the Koran, a rosary. When it was a third full, and resembled a child's disorderly toy cupboard, she placed a human skeleton on top of the pile of artefacts.

Dough drips from the skeleton's bones like flesh onto the debris beneath.

Not all of the exhibition is as bleak. There are celebratory and humorous works that play with the theme of religion and faith.

Among them is a work that displays an eclectic range of Madonna statues, as well as a quirky statue by Hlongwane depicting Christ playing soccer.

*Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa is on until May 27. For more information, call the gallery on (011) 631-1889.

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