Trickster Tactics in the Artwork of Robin Rhode

Bhavisha Panchia

The trickster is a boundary crosser and a speaker of profanities. He is the “mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox”. (Hyde 2008: 7) The trickster can “bring to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight”. (Ibid) He disrupts and reshapes the world around him. Contemporary South African artists have appropriated the art of the trickster in visual ways that not only amuse, but also mock, reveal and recast their chosen objects of attack. The trickster, much like the artist offers resistance to dominant ideologies. Contemporary artist Robin Rhode embodies trickster characteristics in his art production to create works that are not only engaging and critical, but witty and playful too.

It has long been argued that humor and mockery are forms of resistance or protest.  Mikhail Bakhtin emphasizes the critical and subversive functions of humor, pointing to the powerful impact of humor in popular culture in the late medieval and early modern period. During carnivals and festivities, hierarchies disappeared and allowance was given to the “articulation of the idiomatic ‘world turned upside down’,” a funny and subversive way to play with established rules, chain of commands and traditions. (Hart 2007:4) The occurrence of carnivals and festivities saw the disappearance of former ranks and hierarchies and participants were regarded as equal and free.

The rhetoric of ‘resistance’ forms a significant part of South Africa’s art histories, which numerous publications and exhibitions (Williamson, S., 1989; Williamson, S. & Jamal, A., 1996; Wylie, D. 2008; Peffer, J. 2009) attest to. South Africa and Africa at large have been subjected to degradation, exploitation and dehumanization by systematic rules of colonialism. Arguably, artistic responses to the aforementioned abuses have contributed to a saturation of violent, didactic and instructive imagery, and in effect, resulted in scant visibility of fantastical, humorous and playful artworks. Humorous and playful strategies displace and recast the known and the accepted, and instead, offer us numerous contradictions and paradoxes.  It is through such artistic approaches that make visible the moral ambiguity and human absurdity prevalent in a context fraught with contradictions of postcoloniality.

A continued concern with the politics of colonial and apartheid past, led to art making that was, in the main, preoccupied with the grotesque and the spectacular. The artist became the ‘cultural worker’ and produced work that advocated for social change, which in turn resulted in an oppositional culture that was confrontational, direct and unambiguous.  In his essay, Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Some New Writings in South Africa Njabulo Ndebele reflects on spectacle and the failed attention to detail in relation to black South African literature. Even though Ndebele focuses on black South African literature, he notes in his essay that the representation of the spectacular is not confined to literary fiction but it is also present in visual arts such as painting and sculpture, creative sites wherein we are most likely to see “grotesque figures in all kinds of contortions indicative of agony” (Ndebele 2006:38). Ndebele’s essay is important as it brings our attention to those human practices and experiences that tends to be neglected and repressed under hostile regimes. Humor is one of these unattended human tendencies in politically charged South Africa, a humor that is inherent in the everyday social practice of ordinary South Africans. The spectacle that Ndebele articulates can be seen in Alfred Thoba’s Riots (1977), Billy Mandini’s Necklace of Death (1986) and Jane Alexander’s, The Butcher Boys (1985-6). (Richards 2008: 232)

Former South African Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs forwarded a similar argument in his essay Preparing Ourselves for Freedom (1991:187) when he writes,  “[o]ur artists are not pushed to improve the quality of their work; it is enough that it be politically correct. The more fists and spears and guns, the better.” Speaking directly to the premise of my argument, Sachs went as far as to say “[t]he range of themes is narrowed down so much that all that is funny or curious or genuinely tragic in the world is extruded.” (Ibid.)

Taking account of the foregoing discussion, it is evident that seriousness and a strong emphasis on righteousness during resistance and protest generally inhibit laughter and joy. In this light, social protest is fuelled by anger and fear, notwithstanding its consequences to leaving little room for jokes, laughter, and frivolous thoughts. The resistance period in South Africa marked a time that pushed aside the joy of laughter in favour of the fight. Steven Sack, writing in The Neglected Tradition, succinctly articulates the premise of art production by black artists during this time of resistance as:

an attempt to reflect social reality, and the repression of the 1960s. This art was often introspective and “tortured”; at its best and indictment of the social conditions caused by apartheid, at its worst, a “self pitying” and sentimental art. (Sack 1988:17)

Contemporary South African artists have diverted from such methods to employ alternate approaches to resistance and critique over the last twenty years. With the onset of the new political dispensation artists are less concerned with creating work that espouse specific didactic messages, and have favoured more playful, light and amusing ways to engage their audiences. These artists’ works are not filled with grotesque imagery, nor is its primary concern to incite political and social change. Instead, they employ humorous strategies that simultaneously mock, question and reveal.

The project FRESH is one of many initiatives indicative of this move away from political rhetoric to refreshing methodologies and approaches.  Headed by curator Emma Bedford together with the South African National Gallery, FRESH comprised of residencies, exhibitions and publications that celebrated the contribution of young South African artists. As the title of the project suggests, the South African art world was invested in furthering and expanding the creative output by emerging South African artists who were working in creative and innovative ways. One of the artists to participate was Robin Rhode, whose witty conceptual approach to art making saw his rise to local and international success.

Rhode is a dynamic visual artist who works in various media ranging from photographic prints, performance, video and installation. His quick, witty and often humorous artworks, together with his utilization of a globalizing urban youth culture, has established him in the global art market. Using humor to subvert the notion of the centre and the periphery, he explores the marginal figure in democratic South Africa.

Rhode manipulates the ‘colored’[i] figure in an ambiguous and playful manner to challenge the character of the stereotypical ‘colored’ that has often been rendered an object of ridicule and an anomaly in South Africa. Like other humorist figures such as the minstrel and the jester, Rhode would perform for his audience, challenging notions of truth and permanence. Rhode invites a humorous response and asks us to remain open to ambiguity and play-he approaches resistance in a playful manner, fantastical rather than purely “oppositional.” (Gule 2005: 25) Being inspired completely by his own “cultural identity being a colored person” in South Africa, he believed that a sub-cultural language impregnated by politics and marginalization could give birth to a broader artistic vernacular. (Bellini 2005:91)

Rhode draws on his experiences in South Africa as positive and motivating, rendering the negative aspects as “ironic, absurd and humorous.”(Hobbs, 2001:11) When speaking of his personal experiences of marginality, Rhode self-consciously uses and asserts this position as an advantage, using his culturally coded landscape to invade the status quo of the South African art world. This historical, political and geographical marginalization has afforded Rhode a dual position in which to create artistically.

Humour may be one of the conditions for taking up a critical position with respect to what passes for everyday life, producing a change in our situation, which is both liberating and elevating. (Critchley 2002: 41) This is true to Rhode’s approach where he takes personal experiences from everyday life and objects, liberates them from the constraints of reality whilst defying the physical laws of the world. Rhode however does not deny the reality of the space, the figure in space nor the performance, but rather conflates the three to push the limits of reality itself. His initial inspiration for his visual approach is told to several interviewers when he states,

I became inspired by a specific experience or ritual in high school- a type of initiation rite whereby young pupils were forcefully taken into the boys’ toilets by senior pupils. Chalk was stolen from the classroom and the senior boys would draw elementary objects such as candles and bicycles, directly onto the walls of the toilets. The younger pupil was then forced to interact with the drawn object, either trying to blow out the candle or to ride the bicycle. It was a form of initiation into high school subculture. (Rhode quoted in Bellini, 2005:91)

This experience became the model for his most of his artistic practice. This form of initiation used by senior students would ridicule the younger to elevate their status among the rest of the school. Using this playful form of aggression the senior students would attain pleasure as they ridicule the juniors. Here humor is used to enforce power and hierarchy. In one of his first performances Classic Bike (1998), Rhode draws a bicycle on the wall and attempts to ride it, unsuccessfully however. Here the drawing of the bicycle depicts an object of desire; the desire to ride and own the bicycle. The figure raises one leg in the hope to get onto the bicycle; he leans forward, takes hold of the front wheel, crouches down and checks the chain, bends his knees and tries to push the bicycle away.

As a site whereby the paradoxes of real-unreal oscillate, humor and play could be thought as an assemblage of intermeshed and conflated moments of reality and fantasy. (Auboiun quoted in Raskin,V. 1985:41) Artworks that engage with such sites, challenge us to open up to, and remain open to ambiguity. In so doing, we momentarily suspend our preconceptions to produce a change that is both liberating and elevating.  Rhode’s interaction with the representation of an art object as if it was the actual physical object blurs two and three dimension to suggest the confusion between the real and the illusion is unavoidable.  Here humor arises out of the unexpected, from the ironic difference that is incongruous to that which is expected, and can be used to help explain how the subversive quality of humor operates.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal, first proposed the theory of incongruity in the 1600s. He said “Nothing produces laughter than a disproportion between that which one expects, and that which one sees.” (Pascal quoted in Klein, 2007:10) Rhode suspends our disbelief so that our minds are taken to fantastical possibilities. Incongruity is taken to mean arrangement of subjects or objects in ways that bring forth absurdity, and inviting a sense of strangeness in the relationship between them. When that which we expect is overturned, reversed or subverted, they are incongruous to each other, resulting in the shock destruction of expectations, a key ingredient to the comic effect.

As a boundary crosser, the trickster is a dualistic manipulator and a marginal figure with a “disruptive presence” to expose deceit and disrupt the status quo, much like Rhode. (Gaylard 2005:162). Rhode in many ways appropriates such mechanisms to subvert, challenge and amuse his audiences. His artworks are playful and humourous but they also reflect on social and political issues. As such, Rhode employs creative approaches that engage with sensitive cultural and political subjects in a playful and fantastical sense.

References:

BELLINI, A., (2005) Robin Rhode. The Dimension of Desire. Flash Art. October 2005. pp. 90- 92.

CRITCHLEY, S., (2002) On Humour. London: Routledge.

GAYLARD, G.,(2005) After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

GULE, K., (2005) At the Centre’s Edge. Art South Africa V4.1 .Cape Town: Brendon Bell Roberts.

HART, M., (2007) Humour and Social Protest: An Introduction. International Review of Social History [online], 52 (15), 1-20.

Available from: home.medewerker.uva.nl/…thart/…/Introduction%20humor%20and%20social%20protest.pdf [Accessed 26 July 2009].

HOBBS, S., (2001) Using my Youth to the Truth, IN E. Bedford (ed.) Fresh: Robin Rhode. Cape Town.

HYDE, L.,  (2008) Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture. Edinburgh: Canongate.

KLEIN, S., (2007) Art and Laughter. London:I B Taurus.

NDEBELE, N., (2006) Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Essays on South African Literature and Culture. Kwazulu- Natal: University Of Kwazulu-Natal Press.

PEFFER, J., (2009) Art and the end of apartheid. Minneapolis University Press: Minneapolis.

RASKIN, V., (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humour. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

SACHS, A.,(1991) Preparing Ourselves for Freedom:  Culture and the ANC Constitutional Guidelines. TDR (1988) [online], 35 (1), 187-193.

Available from:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146119 [Accessed 19 January 2010].

RICHARDS, C. (2008) Aftermath: Value and Violence in Contemporary South African Art. IN T. Smith, O. Enwezor & N. Condee (eds.) Antinomies of Art and Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp 250-289.

SACK, S., (ed.) (1988) The Neglected Tradition: Towards a New History of South African Art (1930-1988). Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery.

WILLIAMSON, S. and Jamal, A., (1996) Art in South Africa: the Future Present. Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Phillip.
WILLIAMSON, S., (1989) Resistance Art in South Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Phillip.