Visualising China in Southern Africa

Zhang Lifang, Yang Yan, Shuo Wang, Gemma Rodrigues, Kristin NG-Yang, Marcus Neustetter, Stary Mwaba, Khangelani Moyo, Mark Lewis, Nicola Kritzinger, T Tu Huynh, Binjun Hu, Patricia Hayes, Philip Harrison, Esther Esmyol, Romain Dittgen, Malcolm Corrigall, Cheng Ying, Rui Assubuji, Ross Anthony, Ruth Simbao, Juliette Leeb-du Toit

Description

Reflects on Chinese presence in African countries through the lens of the visual arts and material culture, analysing forms such as photography, painting, film, political posters and architecture.

With China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture, however, is a neglected field.

Visualising China in Southern Africa is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

Richly illustrated, the collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. Some of the artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.

Introduction Geopolitics by Other Means: Navigating the Chinese Presence in Southern Africa through Art – Ross Anthony, Ruth Simbao & Juliette Leeb-du Toit

PART 1 BIOGRAPHY

Chapter 1 A Letter to My Cousin in China: Migrancy and Dilemmas of Burial – Ruth Simbao

Chapter 2 A Chinese Immigrant Collector and the Story of His Stamp Cover – Binjun Hu

Chapter 3 The Chinese Camera Club of South Africa: Landscape and Belonging – Malcolm Corrigall

Chapter 4 Abapakati: Chinese Intermediaries and Artisanal Mining on the Zambian Copperbelt Photo Essay – Stary Mwaba & Ruth Simbao

Chapter 5 Diary of a Diasporic Chinese Artist in South Africa Artist’s Reflection – Kristin NG-Yang

PART 2 CIRCULATION

Chapter 6 Traces of Chinese Trade Ceramics in Southern Africa – Esther Esmyol

Chapter 7 Hidden Objects at the Johannesburg Art Gallery: Han Dynasty Míngqì – Nicola Kritzinger

Chapter 8 Shifting Urbanity and Global China in Conversation: Views from Johannesburg and Lusaka – Mark Lewis & Romain Dittgen

Chapter 9 Tech Transfer: Marcus Neustetter’s China in Africa Corpus – Gemma Rodrigues & Marcus Neustetter

Chapter 10 Moffat Takadiwa: Reincarnating Chinese Commodity Waste in Zimbabwe – Lifang Zhang

PART 3 TRANSGRESSION

Chapter 11 Postcard Representations of Indentured Chinese Labourers in South Africa’s Reconstruction, 1904–1910 – T Tu Huynh

Chapter 12 Seeing and Being Seen: Visualising China and the Chinese People in South Africa – Philip Harrison, Khangelani Moyo & Yan Yang

Chapter 13 Wolf Warrior II: Chinese Film, African Settings and Western Narrative Convergence – Ross Anthony

Chapter 14 The Political Sublime: Reading Kok Nam, Mozambican Photographer, 1939–2012 – Rui Assubuji & Patricia Hayes

Chapter 15 Understanding William Kentridge from China – Ying Cheng & Shuo Wang

Chapter 16 Boiling Frogs: Narratives of Coloniality in South African Art – Juliette Leeb-du Toit

List of Figures

Acknowledgment

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• África
• Involvement of the People's Republic of China in Africa
• History of art
• Sino-African relations
• Material culture
• Southern Africa
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• General
• History
• Africa
• China
• ART

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776147700
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

China and Africa have long shared a history of contact points shaped by global political forces, particularly from the time of colonialism, through to the Cold War. With China’s current rise, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. While issues such as trade, aid and development have received much attention, Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture is a neglected field.
Visualising China in Southern Africa: Biography, Circulation, Transgression is a groundbreaking volume that addresses this deficit through an engagement with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing the broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamp covers, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.
Among the artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors represented in this volume are Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Kristin NG-Yang, Eugene Hön, Marcus Neustetter, Dan Halter, Gerald Machona, Kudzanai Chiurai, Moffat Takadiwa, William Kentridge, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Mark Lewis, Kok Nam, Henion Han, Wu Jing, Zapiro and Shengkai Wu.

This pathbreaking publication draws together, for the first time, works by authors who analyse the encounter between Chinese and Africans through the lens of visual arts and material culture. Led by the leading scholars of artistic representation in China—Africa engagement, the contributors make visible the circulations and connections between material objects, identity, and culture in the expanding relationship between Chinese and Africans. Carefully curated visual images accompany the text and make this an essential read.
— Jamie Monson , Professor of History, Michigan State University
This is perhaps the most important contribution to the growing body of China—Africa literature of the decade. The authors turn their attention to the visual, artistic, and cultural aspects of Africa—China contact and engagements, touching on the geopolitical and the personal, the colonial and contemporary. Individually, the chapters challenge existing discourses and narratives, and offer up new ways of seeing relations and impacts through art, artists and artefacts, highlighting insightful complexities, tensions, fractures and anxieties. Taken together, it is breathtaking in its ambition and scope.
— Yoon Jung Park , Executive Director, Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network; and Programme Director, Africa-China Initiative, Georgetown University
A fascinating and important collection. More than an expansion of the dominant economic/geopolitical framing of the Africa—China relationship, it is an intervention in that framing, and a crucial one.
— Cobus van Staden , Founder and Managing Editor, China Global South Project
VISUALISING CHINA IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
BIOGRAPHY CIRCULATION TRANSGRESSION
EDITED BY JULIETTE LEEB - DU TOIT RUTH SIMBAO ROSS ANTHONY
Published in South Africa by
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Compilation © Juliette Leeb-du Toit, Ruth Simbao and Ross Anthony 2022
Chapters © Individual contributors 2022
Published edition © Wits University Press 2022
Cover image credits (front, clockwise from top) ‘Notes Towards a Model Opera’, 2015, William Kentridge; ‘Photograph of Alien’, 1939, Courtesy of Henion Han Archive; ‘Stamp Cover’, 1940, Courtesy of Shengkai Wu; ‘Chinese Cabbage’, 2015, Stary Mwaba; ‘Smell of Harare A’, 2014, Moffat Takadiwa. (front flap) Dish, Japan, late seventeenth century; ‘South Ore Body Shaft’, 2019, Ruth Simbao and Stary Mwaba. (back) ‘Cold and Grey’, ca.1965, Wing Shung Lau; ‘The Rhinoceros Who Looked/s at the Sky’, 2013, Diane Victor; ‘John Chinaman’, ca.1905, Sallo Epstein & Co. (back flap) Dish, China, ca.1730–1745; ‘One Woman at the Centre of the Universe’, 2015, Marcus Neustetter; ‘Durban Kambaki’, 2020, Mark Lewis.
First published 2022
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/22022127670
978-1-77614-767-0 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-768-7 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-769-4 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-770-0 (EPUB)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in captions for the use of images. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact Wits University Press in case of any omissions or errors.
This publication is peer reviewed following international best practice standards for academic and scholarly books.
The publication of this volume was made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Project manager Catherine Damerell
Copy editor Lynda Gilfillan
Proofreader Alison Lockhart
Indexer Sanet le Roux
Cover design and layout Gabrielle Guy
Typeset in PS Fournier Std, Sporting Grotesque and Heiti TC
IN MEMORY OF DOMINIQUE MALAQUAIS (1964 - 2021) ART HISTORIAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST
CONTENTS
Introduction Geopolitics by Other Means: Navigating the Chinese Presence in Southern Africa through Art
Ross Anthony, Ruth Simbao Juliette Leeb-du Toit
1 Biography
1 A Letter to My Cousin in China: Migrancy and Dilemmas of Burial
Ruth Simbao
2 A Chinese Immigrant Collector and the Story of His Stamp Cover
Binjun Hu
3 The Chinese Camera Club of South Africa: Landscape and Belonging
Malcolm Corrigall
4 Abapakati: Chinese Intermediaries and Artisanal Mining on the Zambian Copperbelt
Stary Mwaba & Ruth Simbao Photo Essay
5 Diary of a Diasporic Chinese Artist in South Africa
Kristin NG-Yang Artist's Reflection
2 Circulation
6 Traces of Chinese Trade Ceramics in Southern Africa
Esther Esmyol
7 Hidden Objects at the Johannesburg Art Gallery: Han Dynasty Míngqì
Nicola Kritzinger
8 Shifting Urbanity and Global China in Conversation: Views from Johannesburg and Lusaka
Mark Lewis & Romain Dittgen Photo Essay
9 Tech Transfer: Marcus Neustetter's China in Africa Corpus
Gemma Rodrigues & Marcus Neustetter Artist's Interview
10 Moffat Takadiwa: Reincarnating Chinese Commodity Waste in Zimbabwe
Lifang Zhang
3 Transgression
11 Postcard Representations of Indentured Chinese Labourers in South Africa's Reconstruction, 1904–1910
T Tu Huynh
12 Seeing and Being Seen: Visualising China and the Chinese People in South Africa
Philip Harrison, Khangelani Moyo & Yan Yang
13 Wolf Warrior II : Chinese Film, African Settings and Western Narrative Convergence
Ross Anthony
14 The Political Sublime: Reading Kok Nam, Mozambican Photographer, 1939–2012
Rui Assubuji & Patricia Hayes
15 Understanding William Kentridge from China
Ying Cheng & Shuo Wang
16 Boiling Frogs: Narratives of Coloniality in South African Art
Juliette Leeb-du Toit
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Index
INTRODUCTION
GEOPOLITICS BY OTHER MEANS: NAVIGATING THE CHINESE PRESENCE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA THROUGH ART
ROSS ANTHONY , RUTH SIMBAO JULIETTE LEEB-DU TOIT
In the past few decades, the growing Chinese presence in Africa, along with many other regions of the Global South, has given rise to a significant body of research, much of it focused on politics, economics and various policy-related themes. However, as fields such as postcolonialism have demonstrated, any burgeoning transregional interaction gives rise not only to new configurations of money and power, but also to new cultural forms, including the visual and performing arts, literature, popular culture, social space, and everyday narratives and counter-narratives. Artistic creation engaging with African and Chinese intersections has grown markedly in the past decade or so. However, in-depth scholarly analysis of Chinese presence in Africa and the visual arts remains limited to a small number of scholars, and to date no scholarly text has consolidated this research. Thus, a key motivation of this volume is to draw together, for the first time, the work of some of these authors in a single scholarly book that addresses, with depth and nuanced contextual analysis, Chinese and African encounters, through the lens of visual art and material culture.
The authors examine an array of artistic media and cultural material objects, including photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, installation, postcards, stamps, political posters, cartoons and city space. They bring together rigorous visual analysis typical of art history and the broader material turn in social science and the humanities, where objects, far from being inanimate and detached, are an inextricable connecting force in the construction of identity, society and thought itself (Latour 2005 ; Miller 2005 ; Bennett 2010 ). Materiality is thus enmeshed in all aspects of life, playing critical roles in the ways humans navigate their personal, communal, political, economic and spiritual experiences in the world. Given the inter-regional focus of this volume, objecthood here is inextricably bound to an elsewhere in that many of the materials discussed originate from afar, but also in the sense that they generate novel forms of imagination of this elsewhere within their new contexts.
Such engagements are not only aesthetic in nature. They are underpinned by tectonic shifts in politics and economics, which not only give rise to new material realties, but also create