The Poetry In Between: South-South

To kick-start this annual event Goodman Gallery invited curator Carolyn H. Drake for the first exhibition – The Poetry In Between: South-South. The show brings together a cross-section of intergenerational artists from southern Africa and Brazil. Through existing and newly commissioned works, the exhibition discusses the multifarious issues that connect these two regions within the discourse of the geopolitical south, by addressing universal questions through a southern lens. The point of departure of the exhibition is rooted in poetic manifestations as a way to understand the addressed issues as open ended and varied in meaning.

A core consideration within The Poetry In Between: South-South is to explore the elements that compose the intricate path of our existence – a topic that is more about condition than place, more about subtext than context. Artists reflect on poetic elements of the everyday, in which personal narratives feed into collective histories through utterances and gestures of otherwise unspoken, unrecorded moments, all originating in a global south. The Poetry In Between: South-South ultimately traverses the development of a supposed identity of the South that is being reconsidered within contemporary visual art. Or, in the words of art historian Felipe Scovino: “Brazil’s visual arts sees the postmodern subject not as something or someone whose identity is unified and stable, but rather as something fragmented and […] comprising multiple identities that may at times be contradictory or unresolved.” Cultural theorist, Kwame Anthony Appiah discerns a similar development in South Africa, namely that “the South African identity is a work in progress. Its meaning will repose in an archive that remains to be written.” While Africa and Brazil have a long history often centrally linked to slavery, more recently South Africa and Brazil have grown to share many other connections, as young democracies with a similar political and cultural ethos and a comparable economic and urban fabric. Inescapable factors that occur within these connections include overlapping extremes such as the combination of underdevelopment and overdevelopment within one economic system and the ever-present inequality between marginalised and well-off communities. If we look within the subtext of the clear contrasts and schizophrenic characteristics that mark these southern territories, we might find a new sense of what connects these places. It is the space in between the extremes that this exhibition aims to evoke.