STEVE BANDOMA: Infecting the City Festival

Infecting the City Festival’s international and local visual, performance and mixed media artists are reeling from an intense and exhausting week of being immersed in the theme HOME AFFAIRS.They are ready to reveal their experiences,inspiration and performance ideas for the three core site-specific works in the Festival.

Please join us for snacks and drinks.

date: 4th February 2009 at 16h30 until 18h00
venue: The Gymnasium above the New Space
Theatre, 44 Long Street
rsvp NOW: publicity@infectingthecity.com for catering purposes
For more information on the festival, visit www.infectingthecity.com

COLLABORATOR BIOGRAPHIES

Brian Geza: Creatively stimulated by social issues, Brian is the founder and director of Zvishamiso Arts, a dance, music and theatre outfit with a mandate to ‘edutain’ its audiences. He was a member of Zimbabwe’s premier dance company, Tumbuka, for 6 years until 2006.

Fabrice Guillot: Poetic choreographer, designer and dancer Fabrice is a founder member of French company, Retouramont (1990). Before that he worked with the Roc In Lichen Company, and with Kitsou Dubois. In 1992 he created his first ‘public space’ performance, on top of a building in Paris.

Kai Lossgott: A South African writer and visual artist working in video, performance and experimental film, Kai is currently the artistic director of “City Breath”, a collaborative urban video poetry and performance festival for the Cape 09 Biennale.

Julia Raynham: As a South African artist, Julia’s work is an assemblage of performance, composition and divination. Her point of orientation is ‘the body’ with its mutable capacity to exist in the metropolis and engage with augmented states of reality. She embraces high fashion and ritual plant medicines as subversive catalysts in her image making.

Alfred Hinkel:

Michael Lister:

Mary Manzole: A Zambian performer and performer-facilitator, and trained in Theatre for Development methodologies, Mary uses her skills to disseminate information to marginalized people through the arts. She has just completed her BA Honours Degree in Applied Drama at The Witswatresrand University.

Penelope Youngleson: Hailing from Durban, Penelope is a theatre maker currently studying at UCT. Her Master’s course focusses on the intersection, distillation and installation of Performance and Fine Art diciplines within her specific socio-geograhic, historical and philosophical context.

Steve Bandoma: Born in D.R Congo, Steve obtained his BA (FA) degree from Academies des Beaux-Arts University of Kinshasa, and moved to South Africa in 2005. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions both locally and internationally, and had his first solo exhibition in Cape Town in 2008.

Heeten Bhagat: An unclassically/anarchically trained arts professional, Heeten has experience in design, dance, film and education. Currently working on creative educative projects that are specifically looking at ways in which culture [present/past/future] and its innate value can be incorporated in a new post-surreal Zimbabwe.

Brigitte Defaix: Director and performer of mime/movement theatre, Dutch artist Brigitte works in and outside the Netherlands. She was with site-specific theatre company Griftheatre Amsterdam for 13 years before joining up with SLEM Landscapetheatre, and produces her own work through Stichting ZOOM.

Athi-Patra Ruga: Working in the fields of performance, photography, video installation and fashion, Jo’burg-based Athi-Patra describes his working method as resulting from 'the clash between material and memory', but notions of utopia and dystopia also form a common thread. His works have been exhibited extensively in Africa and Europe.

Interview

First Encounter with Steve Bandoma

Steve Bandoma types out responses to my questions whilst in residency at Cite Internationale des Arts in partnership with Mains d’Oeuvres in Paris, where he received an art award and is working on his new work there. Barely 30-years of age, he has managed to swoop up the South African art industry with his take on the conceptual realms of art. So good his work that he received an honourable mention award in the Art Buzz Book 2009 Collection (USA) and also managed to secure a fellowship with the Swiss Arts Council (2009).
Many-a-artist will tell you their first encounter with an easel or attempt at art occurred during their early childhood days. However Bandoma believes he was born an artist:
“I use this term „artist‟ very carefully though! Because there is a lot of confusion today.” He warns. “It is not because you can sing or play with Photoshop that makes you an artist. I mean you can sing and as such can be called a singer. Or you can paint and be labelled a painter, but to be an artist is something far more complex than singing and painting.”
Fair enough considering he believes his artistry is an innate ability and as the old adage goes – “each one to his own.” But in order for one to nurture and establish a natural born talent it is important to factor in how they were socialised and how living in Kinshasa shaped this artist‟s contemporary perspectives.
“My birthplace is an environment which is associated with producing African Art in traditional sense of being an artist and has not much room for the more contemporary practise or conceptual side of art. In 2003, in Kinshasa, we [Francis Mampuya, Vithois Mwilambwe, Alain Mwilambwe, Apolinaire Wantina and tree others] created a movement called “ Librisme Synergie” protesting against academic education system in Congo for not establishing new media or contemporary practice. At colleges I had a desire to develop my career towards the more contemporary side of art.”
With such limitations, a move to South Africa was an inevitable card soon to be dealt in this artist‟s life.
“It‟s was very important for me to spend times out of my country, so I moved to South Africa in 2005. And thereafter I spent almost a year looking for the right contacts in art circles – first in Johannesburg then in Cape Town. South Africa was just where I wanted to be –every hour, minute and second spent here just inspired me further towards being an artist. And I was not going to give up, even after many rejections. There was no other option for me, not even
going back home was an option. I had to get what I wanted. I reflected upon every rejection letter that came my way and was further encouraged to do my best.”
Coupled by a determinism to be recognised and established as an artist – the opportunity came towards the end of 2005 in the Cape 07/ X-Cape Festival. Since then there has been no looking back.
Today, having exhibited at numerous exhibitions, there still stands a difficulty in defining his style. Bandoma laughs candidly before pronouncing that, “some white artists here in South Africa told me not to consider myself as a conceptual artist. Maybe because I am black? I don‟t know. Maybe black artists are not supposed to do conceptual art?”
So not only is there an attempt to break into art circles but there is also a subtle urge to break stereotypical notions on what black artists can practise. Should black artists be limited to pottery or dare I say sculpture and perhaps painting. It becomes further difficult to examine what artists such as Bandoma can and cannot do largely because his vast exposure to contemporary art practise and many other cultures has led to him producing cultural diverse works that cannot be limited by racial barriers.
Besides the colour lines of art practise, Bandoma identifies three other challenges that have made his art path so much more vexing that the ordinary artist:
“It has been though working as a full time artist in another country, for years, with no family around. But then again that was my decision. At times my art has been commercial unviable and as such I have had to lean on my family for support. Another thing about living in South Africa has been my inability to articulate myself fluently in South African languages which is made worse by my not being a South African Citizen. Now imagine the implications of that.”
But I still ponder on whether or not for an artist such as Bandoma, or for any African artist, in this particular day in age where African Art is exoticised and commands a growing demand from those with a penchant for the spectacle of the other, wouldn‟t it be just easier to make traditional art. “I am a conceptual artist. Okay!? I believe that good or inspired art brings meaning in life and also allows an intellectual body to grow,” responds Bandoma as he justifies his choice to dabble in conceptual art as opposed to what he dubs the less mentally stimulating traditional art practise.
The journey is far from over. The challenges come and go. Optimism precedes a quest to be established internationally as an artist: “I see myself in Documenta, Venice Biennale, etcetera!” smile Bandoma as he releases that was the last question.

By Unathi Kondile

STEVE BANDOMA

Infecting the City Festival

The players, from aliens series, 2010

Biography

Interview

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