Creative output submission
Saadjies Art Collection and Nomadic Exhibition
2017
Creative output submission
Saadjies Art Collection and Nomadic Exhibition
2017
Creative output submission
Saadjies Art Collection and Nomadic Exhibition
2017
Overview
Saadjies is an Afrikaans word which can be translated as ‘seed’ or ‘pod’. Metaphorically, it refers to small ideas that can have a big impact when allowed to spread. In this project, these ideas are embodied in small sculptural artefacts.
Over 100 small ‘Saadjies’ were collected from sculptors, artists and craftspeople from across South Africa. Mathews and Associates Architects conceptualised and organised the project. These were exhibited either as a collection and a formal exhibition, or in guerrilla fashion in what are normally considered spaces of ‘formal’ art. The exhibitions were photographed by the Saadjies project organisers, artists and spectators, and were posted online, creating a third layer of exhibition in the virtual world of social media.
The project culminated in a final exhibition of posters with photographs of informal exhibitions and the Saadjies themselves, as well as a screening of a short documentary of the project in March 2017 at the Atterbury Theatre.
Creative research submissions
2020
As part of the submission by Pieter Mathews in collaboration with Dr. Hendrik Auret from the Department of Architecture of the University of Free State
Creative research submissions
2020
As part of the submission by Pieter Mathews in collaboration with Dr. Hendrik Auret from the Department of Architecture of the University of Free State
Overview
Saadjies is an Afrikaans word which can be translated as ‘seed’ or ‘pod’. Metaphorically, it refers to small ideas that can have a big impact when allowed to spread. In this project, these ideas are embodied in small sculptural artefacts.
Over 100 small ‘Saadjies’ were collected from sculptors, artists and craftspeople from across South Africa. Mathews and Associates Architects conceptualised and organised the project. These were exhibited either as a collection and a formal exhibition, or in guerrilla fashion in what are normally considered spaces of ‘formal’ art. The exhibitions were photographed by the Saadjies project organisers, artists and spectators, and were posted online, creating a third layer of exhibition in the virtual world of social media.
The project culminated in a final exhibition of posters with photographs of informal exhibitions and the Saadjies themselves, as well as a screening of a short documentary of the project in March 2017 at the Atterbury Theatre.
Academic Framework: Guerrilla re-scripting of everyday places
The Saadjies project and subsequent exhibitions can be referred to as an architectural act or gesture, where the physical object, in this case the Saadjie, is not a traditional work of architecture, but rather a small sculpture. However, the selection, placement, documentation, curation and ultimate exhibition of these Saadjies, can be defined as a spatial and contextual act that requires an understanding of context, space, scale, texture and meaning. The making, placement and interpretation of a Saadjie is therefore a decidedly architectural endeavour, especially when seen in light of the influential existential understanding of architecture formulated by the Norwegian architectural theorist, Christian Norberg-Schulz: “The existential purpose of building (architecture) is […] to uncover the meanings potentially present in the environment” (Norberg-Schulz 1980:18).
Saadjies travelled with participants to South African towns including Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Richmond, Potchefstroom and Pretoria, and internationally to cities including Amsterdam, Shanghai and Venice. Saadjies were strategically placed in certain contexts and photographed in a ‘sculpture-bombing’ fashion. The term is derived from the notion of ‘photobombing’ which refers to the action of ‘ruining’ a photographic composition by walking into the camera’s field of view. The meaning of each Saadjie could be interpreted differently depending on the context – thus making its selection, placement, and subsequent photographic documentation a strategic spatial, curatorial and architectural act.
Due to their perceived meaning (deliberate or unintentional) the Saadjies could simultaneously unearth and uproot the accepted ‘Spirit of place’ or ‘Genius Loci’ as described by Norberg-Schulz. This can be illustrated by referring to one of the Saadjies, the plastic Cone Virus by artist and curator Gordon Froud. Created from bright orange traffic cones, the artist gives “worthless plastic items” a new meaning by combining them with cable ties into the molecular shape of a virus. Photographed in context of the construction site, there is a commentary and tongue-in-cheek reference to the cone’s original design intent. Photographed in the hands of sex workers in Amsterdam’s red-light district, the virus subtly references HIV and other STD’s. In this way, the Saadjie not only begets new meaning from its context, but the combination of Saadjies and contexts expose both existing and novel meanings.
The nature of the Saadjies project was inherently improvisational. The location for formal exhibitions were not always traditional gallery spaces. Instead, exhibitions were held in a range of functional architectural typologies, including heritage buildings, botanical gardens, theatre foyers and vineyard sheds. This necessitated an attitude of adaptation or what is described by the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze as “not to predict but to be attentive to the unknown that is knocking at the door” (Deleuze 1994:105). Metaphorically speaking, Saadjies knocks on the doors of established places and challenges, interrogates, uproots and questions their sedimented meanings. When people engage in this kind of “creative participation”, as Norberg-Schulz called it, they may carve out for themselves an “existential foothold”, however fleeting and transitory it may appear (Norberg-Schulz 1980:185).
With each formal exhibition new layers of meaning were generated: posters with photographs of the informal exhibitions would be exhibited alongside the Saadjies themselves, giving the Saadjies, as well as the physical exhibit locations, numerous avenues of interpretation and contextualisation.
Saadjies straddle the line between traditional works of art and what the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, more generally referred to as “things”. This should not be seen as a dismissive term. From a phenomenological perspective Heidegger saw great value in the thing as a “gathering-appropriating staying” (Heidegger 1950:172). Things bring the multifarious characteristics of the situation into a new unity, and safeguards them in a particular moment of revelation. In addition, Heidegger proposed that sculptural works may be seen as “the embodiment of places which, opening and preserving a region, hold something free gathered around them, granting a stay to each thing, and a dwelling to humans in the midst of things” (Heidegger 1969:308).
Creative Contribution
Ultimately, the Saadjies project aimed to dissolve or diffuse the strong boundaries which separate what is seen as a formal exhibition or considered as ‘acceptable’ art from ‘everyday artistic activity’. By constantly moving the act of the exhibition between the two, and exhibiting the informal exhibits as formal exhibitions, the project not only culminated in a beautiful collection of diverse South African works of art, but also brought a new appreciation of young and upcoming artists to the attention of the formal art sector, including the main sponsor, art auction house Strauss & co. Through a Department of Arts and Culture Mzansi Golden Economy Grant, a number of Saadjies were purchased from their creators, thereby generating an income for many participants, as well as creating a collection of unique and beautiful objects for future exhibitions.
Each Saadjie offers an insight, perhaps precisely because ‘things’ are more intimately connected to everydayness (and more democratic) than ‘traditional works of sculpture’. Myburgh (2017:96) observed that “the Saadjies project offered viewers different ways of looking at art, and in a range on incarnations: from the collected and curated to the dispersed; from the films and photographed to the shared on social media; from static work shown in a traditional gallery space to work traversing the world as a form of public art”.
Saadjies is very much an effort of revelation, expressing the activist tendencies of its maker in search of access to new ‘existential footholds’. Saadjie artists and organisers employed guerrilla tactics to challenge the hegemony of the ‘art industry’ and exclusive ‘exhibition culture’ by noticing and re-scripting everyday urban environments and works of architecture through unconventional methods of exhibition and curation. As such, Saadjies free up interstitial ‘architectural’ opportunities between the realms of sculpture, things, works and acts of activism.
Public Profile
Saadjies gained traction on social media platforms Instagram and Facebook under #saadjies. A catalogue of the project was published in 2018. The project received a BASA Small Business Award in 2017 and was formally exhibited as a collection at five locations throughout South Africa. It is featured in the Cool Capital Guerrilla Design Magazine. More than 100 creatives participated in the project.
Anton van Wouw Huis
Amsterdam
Potchefstroom
Stellenbosch
World
Awards + Public profile
Bibliography
Project Publications
Mathews, P.J. and Cool Capital Biennale (2018). Saadjies: 100+ travelling miniature sculptures from South Africa. South Africa: Visual Books.
Myburgh, J. (2017). Saadjies. Cool Capital Guerrilla Design Magazine, 20 Mar., pp.82–94.
Strauss, co (2016). 2016 Review.
Works cited
Deleuze, G. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP.
Heidegger, M. 1950. The Thing. Translated by Hofstadter, A. In: Hofstadter, A. (ed.). 2001. Poetry, language, thought. New York: Harper Perennial, pp. 163-184.
Heidegger, M. 1969. Art and space. Translated by Seibert, C.H. and modified by Veith, J. In: Figal, G. (ed.). 2009. The Heidegger reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 305-309.
Norberg-Schulz, C. 1980. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture. New York: Rizzoli.