THOKOZANI MTHIYANE, GRISELDA HUNT

Crude Nothingness (Doodle Exhibition)

July 18, 1994

Exhibition poster, 1994

Crude Nothingness (Doodle exhibition) brought together artist and poet Thokozani Mthiyane, and dancer, Griselda Hunt. Significantly, these two were established artists in Durban, and were not associated with the Technikon. As put forth in the proposal, Mthiyane’s contribution was to be a showing of drawings and poetry, and Hunt’s a dance performance in the gallery. The poster for the exhibition read:

Crude Nothingness Doodle Exhibition
By Thokozani Mthiyane
Supplemented by Griselda’s Dance[1]

Mthiyane’s presented pastel and oil crayon drawings, collaged images, as well as a number of panels with his poetry hand lettered in French and English. The installation itself was collage-like with images and texts of varied sizes placed in uneven patterns along the walls.
Many of the drawings depicted images of township violence. In one, two policemen give chase with guns while in another are haunting depictions of beatings and hangings. On another, a bare breasted woman seems to lead a mass of followers, suggesting both the allegoric “liberty” and the news images of the matriarchs who had defiantly faced the South African military in just such a manner. He writes of despair, but also hope in his poem Blues for Mama Africa:

Bright Days are Dead
The Sunshine, the green and black
Pale shadows of grief encompass us
Life is never affable
When the tree of a nation stands
Rootless on blood soaked soil
There are mirages of love
In the kingdom of hate…
The raven’s laughter over cries of a dove

And in two other poems:

Our eyes see not beyond the city walls
Our brains suffocate in the airless smog
The essence of life is blurred
In an existence of hope and the void
Laughter and screeching cars
The echoes of rotting souls
We are manufactured faces with eyes of […]

I behold her
A white phantom against a black background
A swing of a fugitive monkey on an empty tree
Her eyes hold the key to the universal liberation
Who sooths the […] of the dying
Who knows the colour of the road of our […]
We are confined
In the circle
Of spiritual slaughter
What have we done to our […] hostess
These random thoughts lead us to nowhere different -
Dust is our heir

What might be seen as two distinct genres came together in this exhibition. Before the audience was allowed to enter, Mthiyane placed lit candles around the perimeter of the floor. He then ‘prepared’ Hunt for her dance by carefully painting her partially naked body as she sat in chair at the center of the room. Hunt then moved to a space where the candles separated her from the audience and lay still on her back. The viewers were then ushered in by Mthiyane and stood within this inscribed space of light, as Hunt performed her dance.

THOKOZANI MTHIYANE, GRISELDA HUNT, performance 1994

THOKOZANI MTHIYANE, GRISELDA HUNT, performance 1994