Description
Book SynopsisWith China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture, however, is a neglected field.
Visualising China in Southern Africa is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.
Richly illustrated, the collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. Some of the artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.
Table of Contents
- Introduction Geopolitics by Other Means: Navigating the Chinese Presence in Southern Africa through Art – Ross Anthony, Ruth Simbao & Juliette Leeb-du Toit
- PART 1 BIOGRAPHY
- Chapter 1 A Letter to My Cousin in China: Migrancy and Dilemmas of Burial – Ruth Simbao
- Chapter 2 A Chinese Immigrant Collector and the Story of His Stamp Cover – Binjun Hu
- Chapter 3 The Chinese Camera Club of South Africa: Landscape and Belonging – Malcolm Corrigall
- Chapter 4 Abapakati: Chinese Intermediaries and Artisanal Mining on the Zambian Copperbelt Photo Essay – Stary Mwaba & Ruth Simbao
- Chapter 5 Diary of a Diasporic Chinese Artist in South Africa Artist’s Reflection – Kristin NG-Yang
- PART 2 CIRCULATION
- Chapter 6 Traces of Chinese Trade Ceramics in Southern Africa – Esther Esmyol
- Chapter 7 Hidden Objects at the Johannesburg Art Gallery: Han Dynasty Míngqì – Nicola Kritzinger
- Chapter 8 Shifting Urbanity and Global China in Conversation: Views from Johannesburg and Lusaka – Mark Lewis & Romain Dittgen
- Chapter 9 Tech Transfer: Marcus Neustetter’s China in Africa Corpus – Gemma Rodrigues & Marcus Neustetter
- Chapter 10 Moffat Takadiwa: Reincarnating Chinese Commodity Waste in Zimbabwe – Lifang Zhang
- PART 3 TRANSGRESSION
- Chapter 11 Postcard Representations of Indentured Chinese Labourers in South Africa’s Reconstruction, 1904–1910 – T Tu Huynh
- Chapter 12 Seeing and Being Seen: Visualising China and the Chinese People in South Africa – Philip Harrison, Khangelani Moyo & Yan Yang
- Chapter 13 Wolf Warrior II: Chinese Film, African Settings and Western Narrative Convergence – Ross Anthony
- Chapter 14 The Political Sublime: Reading Kok Nam, Mozambican Photographer, 1939–2012 – Rui Assubuji & Patricia Hayes
- Chapter 15 Understanding William Kentridge from China – Ying Chen & Shuo Wang
- Chapter 16 Boiling Frogs: Narratives of Coloniality in South African Art – Juliette Leeb-du Toit
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgment
- Contributors
- Index
