Mary Sibande, A Crescendo of Ecstasy, 2018. Installation view: TMRW, Johannesburg
Looking at Mary Sibande’s Crescendo of Ecstasy
Percy Mabandu
At the basic formal level, Sibande’s exhibition is an attempt to investigate modes of liberating sculpture from its eternal fate as a static form, into a fluid, dynamic and immersive experience.
Viewers entering the dimly lit carven that is TMRW Gallery are met by a strident figure of Sophie – the signature character Sibande devised years ago as an alter-ego through whom she address various contentious themes in her storied artworks – here the life size fiberglass figure is besieged by a swarm of snaky roots or vines that dangle from the roof, clawing at her as she stands steady, caught and arrested by the absorbing stillness of her sculpturality.
She’s clad in an elaborate, flowing purple space-age gown, having forgone the Victorian dress that she first wore when she entered the imagination of the art world. The new Sophie’s figure owes part of her dynamism to the multilayered fabrics that seem to conspire with the vines that stalk her, and the lights that adorn her.
Among the vines also hang several Oculus virtual reality goggles that audiences are invited to use to enter the next level of the installation. These elements come even more alive when one puts on the headset that lifts the exhibition into a virtual experience. Seen through the VR goggles, Sophie is freed into movement. The viewer is also able to walk alongside her in the simulated loop as a kind of companion or voyeur of her terrified escape from the slithering vines and flitting red dogs that can also be heard bucking visciously in the manaced digital darkness.
This immersive and experiential aspect, which is made possible by the digital technology of the augmented reality tool, is what gives Sibande’s installation its force. This is in part because the experience of artworks in a gallery has a history of pomp and intimidation. This legendary trepidation is absent in Sibande’s immersive exhibition. There’s a seduction of participatory playfulness that is crafted to affect audiences of all ages.
Sibande’s use of purple in Crescendo of Ecstasy can be traced back to her earlier work titled The Purple Shall Govern, an installation she created after receiving the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award. At the time, the colour purple was invoked to code the coloured paint the Cape Town police had used to spray protesters with during the dark days of apartheid as a way to distinguish people who were in the city to work and those who were seen as troublemakers. In the logic of Sibande’s then work, the purple [painted] masses became “the people” as coded in the Freedom Charter, as in “We the people” and in the preamble of our constitution. However, in her current installation, “the purple” are terrorised by nebulous troubles that may just be simple vines blowing in the digital wind wave or a metaphor for deeper troubles. Either way, Sibande’s show wins by sheer and virtual force of its seductive medium.
- Mary Sibande’s Crescendo of Ecstasy shows at TMRW Gallery in Rosebank Joburg.