Die kunsmedia en herinnering: verlewendiging van die verlede

This dissertation is closely related to my studio research, the product of which is an installation in the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery. The focus of my research is the ruptures that occur in the continuity of family memories. Seeing that my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, the preservation of private memories is extremely important to me. According to postmodern thought, history is not regarded as a single, uninterrupted timeline. Different versions or narratives are equally important in the compilation of history. Micro-histories and private experiences become meaningful to history and so is the preservation of these common documents in archives. Thus the apparent divide between private and public history is blurred. As a result of South Africa’s difficult political history and the particular part played by the Afrikaners, the experience of memory is complicated. “Remembering” and “forgetting” are eminent in the relationship with history – the wilful forgetting of incidents in the past, as well as the “excessive remembering” thereof (Ricoeur 2004: 452 – 453). Afrikaners are not allowed to forget certain past political events. The internalisation of the past is an attempt to suppress it, so that it may only be experienced in the public sphere of history. This suppression can, however, still be observed beneath the surface of private histories, as well as in art works that seem to focus solely on private experiences. The different art media that are investigated in this research (i.e. painting, photography, gum prints, artists books, wax casts and installation art) address aspects of the preservation of memory that deal with estrangement, anonymity, absence and mortality. The interplay between light and dark, exposure and concealment, are metaphors used to examine the discontinuities in history and memory in the private and public spheres. The structure of this paper is presented in various layers: layers of history, art history, private history, and art media. A group of art works have been carefully selected to further the argument and visually realise the mutual interplay of nuances. Each chapter focuses on a specific art medium that is used in the Nagedagtenis installation, as well as on questions concerning history, art history and private history.