Visual Foreign Correspondents presents
Issue 7
Date: 13 May – 09 June 2008
Artists: Thando Mama
Country: South Africa
Title: Prayer, 2008
In collaboration with The Globalised Crystal Ball this is the seventh
issue of Visual Foreign Correspondents. VFC is an independent platform
in which 11 distinguished artists from around the world are invited each
month to give their personal visual commentary on events and situations
from their locally situated perspective. Their works especially created
for urban screens and online platforms. This project will give people in
the streets of Amsterdam a brief window into other regions, peoples and
other kinds of imagination.
Thando Mama, an artist based in Cape Town, his work tackles many issues
including the ways in which images of violence are connected to
representations of black masculinity. Frequently he uses his own body,
passive, silent and vulnerable, capturing the marginality of African
subjects in general.
For Visual Foreign Correspondents, Mama has made ‘Prayer’ in which
scenes of violence and extreme poverty are juxtaposed with an evocative,
textured image sequence of men bending in Islamic prayer. The piece was
made after a visit to Mali, where he witnessed a fellow artist who broke
off discussion to begin praying. Mama described the strangeness of
seeing people praying everywhere. He found himself, as he put it,
“wanting to join them in prayer even though its not my religion or
something that I would not normally do; It seemed to somehow to be a way
to glimpse ‘the other’ in their most spiritual mind. I was looking at
universal images of poverty, as well as hope for the future.”
Visual Foreign Correspondents is connected to The Globalised Crystal
Ball, a series of monthly international seminars hosted by De Balie on
globalisation and the future of the international community and spread
over a full year. These monthly seminars feature internationally
renowned speakers, examining the changing nature of globalisation. The
screen-based artworks play an important role in contributing an
alternative perspective to these meetings. Artist’s contribution to this
event is not simple illustration but provides another kind of
imaginative response to these subjects.
The work will be launched during the seminar event of the Globalised
Crystal Ball in the conference space. An introduction to the work will
be given, making a connection to the seminar and the ideas of the artist.
Independent from the seminar the work will then feature on the urban
screen outside the ‘Balie’ every night for a month, on the The
Contemporary Art Screen, at the Zuidas and in 11-Reatuarant Bar Club,
part of Post-CS, museum of modern art, Amsterdam. These screens will be
in relationship to a specially designed website and ‘Oog’. The VFC
website will show the work and contextualize it with political, social
and cultural background information. Furthermore it will give
information about the project and a possibility for the audience to
interact.
The work will also feature in ‘OOG’, a commentary and opinion platform
that is part the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily
national newspaper. Here the work will feature for a week as part of the
continuing series of artist commentaries.
http://www.visualcorrespondents.com
Screen locations
De Balie: Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl
CASZ: Zuidplein, Amsterdam
http://www.caszuidas.nl
11/Restaurant bar club: Oosterdokskade 3-5, Amsterdam
http://www.ilove11.nl
http://www.volkskrant.nl/oog
Visual Foreign Correspondents
Artistic director: Nanette Hoogslag
Editors: Annet Dekker, David Garcia, Nat Muller, Petra Heck and Eric
Kluitenberg
Thanks to:
Visual Foreign Correspondents is made possible by Amsterdamse Fonds voor
de Kunsten, VSB, De Balie and the Netherlands Media Art Institute
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