South SouthBetween Land and Sea
For the third edition of South South, Goodman Gallery presented Between Land and Sea – a programme of exhibitions, films, public discussions and adjacent projects realised across Johannesburg and Cape Town. Concurrent solo exhibitions by Alfredo Jaar and Ernesto Neto anchored this iteration of South South alongside works by Laura Lima in the Johannesburg viewing room and a group show in the Cape Town project space featuring work by Sue Williamson, El Anatsui and Kapwani Kiwanga. The film programme, co-curated by Paula Borghi and Lara Koseff, ran in Cape Town, and later arteBA in Buenos Aires.
Between Land and Sea emerged in response to the practices of these artists who explore constructions of social space and the natural world, freedom of movement, the real and the imagined spaces between continents and the limits and ethics of representation. The sea has long been deployed in the arts as a metaphor for a ‘non-place’ and as a gateway to the transcendental and transformational. The sea is figured as a ‘zone of exception’ that constitutes and contests the hegemonic geographies of place. It marks an edge in the form of a horizon, beyond which imaginaries exist. It is a connector of continents, serving ancestral voyages, trade, exploration and exploitation – a pathway that has integrated cultures throughout history.
This third edition of South South was accompanied by a film programme titled I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I know what you mean. Curated by Paula Borghi in conversation with Lara Koseff, this was a project based on oral dialogue as a means of connection and historical reverberation. It proposes thinking about words, language and verbal communication as the construction of narrative and dialogue, but also cultural imposition. The programme presented a selection of videos from Latin America that negotiate language, how it is often silenced, either through censorship or historical erasure. These are works that, as the title suggests, communicate with viewers who do not necessarily understand what is being said, but understand the context. In conversation with these works were videos created by artists from across the Atlantic, based on the African continent or in the diaspora. There are overlaps stemming from comparable histories of colonisation and subjugation, and divergences that bring to the fore how diverse these vast regions are. It was first presented at Goodman Cape Town, and later within the Cardinal Site section at arteBA art fair in Buenos Aires in 2019.
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