On March 26, 2021, The Center for African Studies presents hosted its weekly Baraza entitled: “Partners in Crime: The Dog in the Art of Post-apartheid South Africa”. The presentation was given by Dr. Álvaro Luís Lima, an assistant professor of art history here at the University of Florida. His publications include: “The Place of Socialism in African Art.” African Arts (forthcoming, 2021); “A Read-Through of Mozambique’s Liberation Script.” In Atlantica: Contemporary Art of Mozambique and Its Diasporas (2020); and “Screw the Nation! Queer Nationalism and Representations of Power in Contemporary South African Art.” African Arts (2012).
Dr. Lima began his talk describing the work done in South Africa by the photographer Radcliffe, who was obsessed with the South African landscape and began taking photos of the townships in Cape Town. Dr. Lima then transitioned to briefly show the work of Visser Hook, before sharing the frustration Radcliffe experienced with what she captured in her work, specifically the stray dogs interrupting her photography shots. Dr. Lima shared with the audience that Radcliffe had many dogs throughout her lifetime and had strong bonds with them as they were an otherwise canonic genre in South African visual culture.
From Radcliffe’s portrayal of dogs, Dr. Lima took us to the Portuguese control of Angola and the evacuation of the Portuguese Kabacinski. This resulted in the abandonment of dogs by their owners, even the most expensive breeds were without masters–from boxers, bulldogs, hounds to Scottish terriers–they were deserted and roaming for food. Dogs began to gather every morning to be fed by the Portuguese army, but when the army left, the dogs went hungry again. Dr. Lima pointed to the array of expensive breeds that were now street dogs, noting that this phenomenon expressed an excess of the Portuguese colonial regime that no longer has a place in Luanda. This has moved these nonhuman animals from a coherent part of the colonial space in politics to a conspicuous presence for centuries. The Portuguese Army highlighted this fading colonial alliance with the dogs.
Dr. Lima shared with the audience Radcliffe’s reading of a science fiction novel by Russell Robin, titled “Really Walker.” The novel presented a dystopian world following nuclear devastation, from which Radcliffe highlighted quotes related to dogs. Dr. Lima then showed the audience a photographic series of Radcliffe’s domesticated dogs. He described how she responded to the atmosphere of the South African state of emergency by presenting yet another image of chaos in this series of photographs. Dr. Lima stated that Radcliffe’s series offers a glance at the close of the apocalyptic future nearby, opening the space for the imagining of a new horizon. The photography gives a sense of movement from apartheid to the future, suggested in the images by their focus on transition ephemerality in South Africa.
Dr. Lima then discussed the concept of fragile settlements, characterized by being. Dr. Lima characterized this place is being a space of aftermath, like fires and burns, where the dogs often represent movement and blur. The dogs—their brains and behaviors—often reflect current discourses on class, gender, and race. Dr. Lima argued that this is no exception in South Africa, where categorizations of dogs often seemed as definite as enacted political divisions. Dr. Lima explained that dogs are often associated with the security apparatus in this representation of South Africa’s 20th-century history. The dog was used as a security apparatus, especially by the police, who increasingly used dogs in the 1960s as a way of assisting to contain persons. Dr. Lima shared that this was thought to be an attempt by the police to create a sort of a breed that was more closely related to wolves, so this kind of dog would track down insurgents. This happened around the time Radcliffe was developing the photography series and began to bring the image of the dog to the forefront. Dr. Lima considered the concept of the finale that Radcliffe captured through the images of the dogs—sharing both great closeness and familiarity with us, as man’s best friend, but also a radical difference, right the silent witness, where a gap exists between us.
Further analyzing the connections between dogs and humans, Dr. Lima shared insights from scholar Marjorie Garber. Garber argues that part of our cultural fascination with dogs, at least in the West, comes from the fact that the dog becomes the repository of those model human properties that we have cynically ceased to find among humans, such as loyalty and friendship. Dr. Lima talked about concepts of vulnerability, feminine inquiry, and what a sense of totality looks like. He argued that the visual arts are at a favorite position as the battleground from which the animal can be reimagined, where these categories created, but also perhaps where it can be deconstructed, and it has been the primary means on which a person can redefine the fantasy of human exceptionalism.
In ending his lecture, Dr. Lima considered the brilliant work by South African, Mary Sibande. Her work is loosely related to her own personal biography and the history of the women in her family. Sibande’s work portrays dogs as embedded in anger. Outbursts to the forests are guided by an emotional state—the red dog portrayed in the image barks, but is not based on moral principles of faithfulness, friendship, or loyalty. Dr. Lima ends on this note, leaving the audience to think about connections between racism and speciesism.
Written By: Karen Awura-Adjoa Ronke Coker