The National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) will this week officially open ‘TERRA’, a solo exhibition by South African artist Jeannette Unite on Thursday, 19 July at 18h00 in their main gallery.
‘TERRA’ has shown in museums and university art galleries in Germany, the UK, USA, Europe, China and Uzbekistan.
The exhibition focuses on mining in Africa; this body of work was produced in response to extensive visits to a range of mining and industrial sites in Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, and Southern Africa. It examines the paradox of plenty, the corporate constructs around mineral companies’ tax, and the legal aspects of mineral rights and their impact on socio-political subjects.
For over a decade, most of Unite’s work has focused on the mining industry, resource depletion in Africa and the impact these have had on the economic and social conditions. Her large-scale drawings of mining headgear and industrial complexes are executed with chalks and pastels that the artist makes herself, using minerals that she gets from mines, as waste by-products after the extraction of ore. At first glance, these works may appear to be lyrical, graceful compositions portraying old mining machinery, but Unite is at pains to embed a fundamental critique of the way mining has shattered lives, displaced communities and wreaked havoc on the environment. Unite is a very active researcher in archives for source material from which to draw, ‘on the ground’ in the mines themselves as well as the communities that provide labour for mining operation.
Unite’s works reference mining heritage sourced from archives and museums. This includes early geological historical maps and texts that were created during the industrial revolution to guide the mining of coal that fuelled the engines which drove modernity.
The artist has travelled through more than 30 countries accumulating an extensive personal archive of images and materials from the mining industry. The photographs from these travels and images, duplicated from mining museums and archives, are as precious a resource to Unite as the site-specific sands and slime pond tailings from the mines and industrial detritus soiled with history, and loaded with meaning that she mixes into her paints and pastels.
The mining artworks of ‘TERRA’ are made from the very mined material they interrogate so the material is both subject and object. Unite explores the impact and relations between power and earth through the mechanisms, both technical and social of our modern world that are so inextricably linked to mining.
All wealth is derived from the earth, with laws and legislation constructed to regulate who has access and ownership of the resources from the planet.
The exhibition will run until 6 September.
– NAGN
