ABSTRACT

This article discusses four recent, prominent cases of protest over art in South Africa. It reveals that the contemporary art world is a critical space used by engaged artists and social actors to battle out key political, racial, gender and class struggles. In analysing these “art battles,” the importance of interpretive contests over the ideological status of artworks, the organisational power to stir outrage, and the underlying, often opportunistic motivations of protesters is underscored. In the predominantly anti-racist and pro-social transformation context of the post-apartheid era, protests over art are found to involve complex stand-offs between parties which to varying degrees, and in often contestable ways, position themselves as progressive or radical. As a prominent, highly visible site where ideological ambiguities, ambivalences, reversals and ironies are publicly staged, clashes over art are shown to play an important role in the (re)negotiation of relations of race, privilege, gender and tradition within the country’s post/neo-colonial present. Other key findings concern the way in which acts of iconoclasm often engender further, counter-iconoclastic acts, and the way in which protests against highly politicised artworks to an important degree impact on the latter’s success or failure.

摘要

本文讨论了南非最近发生的四个突出的艺术抗议案例。它揭示了当代艺术世界是参与的艺术家和社会行动者用来解决关键的政治、种族、性别和阶级斗争的关键空间。在分析这些“艺术之战”时，强调了对艺术作品的意识形态地位、激起愤怒的组织力量以及潜在的、通常是机会主义的抗议者动机的解释竞赛的重要性。在后种族隔离时代主要是反种族主义和亲社会转型的背景下，人们发现对艺术的抗议涉及政党之间复杂的对峙，这些政党在不同程度上，通常以有争议的方式，将自己定位为进步或激进的。作为一个突出的、高度可见的网站，意识形态的歧义、矛盾心理、逆转和讽刺是公开上演的，艺术冲突被证明在该国后/新殖民时代的种族、特权、性别和传统关系的（重新）谈判中发挥着重要作用。其他主要发现涉及偶像破坏行为经常引发进一步反偶像破坏行为的方式，以及对高度政治化艺术品的抗议在很大程度上影响后者成败的方式。