Furore over murder-accused's artworks

06 December 2016 - 12:25 By Michael Smith
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An artwork in an exhibition in Cape Town has caused a furore because the artist is linked to a murder in the city.

In the early hours of April 14 2013 CCTV cameras captured a man stopping his sports car in Ravenscraig Road, Woodstock, and attacking 23-year-old sex worker Nokuphila Kumalo. A forensic pathologist testified that her death was due to blunt-force trauma.

Along with the security camera footage, evidence from a tracking company proved that the black Porsche Carrera of internationally renowned artist Zwelethu Mthethwa could be placed in that spot at the time of the incident.

The painter and photographer was charged with murder. He was arrested in May 2013 at Cape Town International Airport on his return from an overseas trip.

Now the curators of The New Church Museum and the Iziko South African National Gallery are at the centre of a media storm for including a work by Mthethwa in an exhibition titled Our Lady.

The curators say the chosen works "reference and reinterpret . traditional imagery [of female representation] with the aim of reclaiming or reconstituting notions and attitudes around powerful female capacity".

The work by Mthethwa is an untitled photograph from his Hope Chest series in which he pictured an unnamed woman sitting on a chest outside a small, thatched-roof home.

Mthethwa's broader practice is concerned with imbuing poor South Africans with dignity though his photographs and paintings.

But the sex worker advocacy group SWEAT has cried foul, questioning the curators' motives and demanding that the alleged insensitivity to Kumalo's family and memory be addressed.

Last week Ishtar Lakhani, advocacy and human rights manager at SWEAT, said compromises had been reached with the gallery's management. These included a contextualising statement co-authored by SWEAT and the gallery to be placed adjacent to Mthethwa's work for the duration of the show.

SWEAT also agreed that a portrait of Kumalo based on a police mugshot be included in the gallery's upcoming exhibition of portrait art, Face Value.

While Lakhani welcomed the gallery's willingness to compromise, she said "this openness to engage would not have happened had we not initiated the discussion".

On November 28, Mthethwa was granted leave to have his case reopened after evidence emerged that, on the evening prior to the murder, he had spent more than R2,600 on alcohol at a Guguletu venue.

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