Jane Alexander has consistently produced haunting tableaux of the damaged human fallout from the apartheid society, as well as from the country in transition. In such works as Integration Programme: Man with TV (1995), Alexander reflected on the difficulties of change: A seated black man watches a video of a white man nervously adjusting his tie in a shop window reflection. Both wear suits, as if in anticipation of some important appointment, and the two appear equally ill at ease. Bom Boys (1998) was inspired by the street children of Cape Town’s bustling Long Street, where Alexander herself lived for ten years. She often found them sleeping on the street below her apartment.
All cast from the same mold, Bom Boys is a series of small stocky figures, often masked, cast as both predatory and preyed upon. Their stiff stance conveys the watchfulness, fear, and stoicism of the streetwise child who experiences a world that cannot and will not accommodate him.
Alexander’s equally haunting, many-figured installation from the African Adventure series (1999–2002) was a seminal piece in Africa Remix, the Simon Njami-curated mega show of contemporary African art that toured major art institutions in Germany, France, England, Japan, Sweden, and South Africa from 2004.
Today the concept of “African adventures,” as advertised by travel agencies, echoes early, exotic European explorers’ tales. They offer safari excursions with untamed creatures—now safely in controlled reserves. Alexander’s “adventure” presents a very different picture, highlighting the ways imperial appropriations affected Africa, mutating cultures, traditions, and ways of living into hybrid experiences. The zoomorphic creatures of African Adventure are products of this exchange, caught between worlds.
African Adventure, which Alexander restaged in each of the museums where Africa Remix appeared, marked an important turning point in the artist’s working method. No longer does the artist create large, moveable tableaux: In the years since, Alexander has made site-specific installations. On each occasion, one or more new characters are added—like Harbinger (page 106) in Personal Affects in New York. Harbinger has the horned head of a buck attached loosely to the figure. One horn is well-developed—straight and strong; the other is curled back upon itself, underdeveloped. Lengthy titles listing all the elements included in the installation accompany the works, offering engaging “clues” as to each figure’s origins.
Alexander’s interventions—whether staged on and next to a beached barge on the Belgian coast, in St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York, in a Singaporean courtroom, or within a specially constructed security area in front of the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona—all provide a theatrical backdrop for her sculptures, installed by Alexander into silent tableaux projecting themes of displacement, neurosis, and vulnerability: profound revelations of how imposed, colonial traumas mutate societies and their citizens, making their way insidiously into the very fabric of the self.
Integration Program: Man with TV 1995
Plaster, oil paint, clothing, found objects, video film
138 x 100 x 220 cm
Collection of Iziko South African National Gallery
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Mark Lewis
© Jane Alexander
African Adventure 1999–2002
Reinforced plaster, oil paint, fiberglass, acrylic paint, synthetic clay, ammunition boxes, clothing, Venetian gloves, gold, diamonds, jackal skin, machetes (pangas), sickles, toy tractors, child’s car, child’s push chair, oil drum, wood, steel, Bushmanland earth
Dimensions variable
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Mark Lewis
© Jane Alexander
Bom Boys 1998
Fiberglass, acrylic paint, clothing, wood
105 x 360 x 360 cm
Photograph courtesy of the Tobu Museum, Tokyo
© Jane Alexander
Integration Program: Man in Poweralls (extra tough, reinforced throughout, guaranteed fully shrunk) 1996
Plaster, oil paint, leather, steel, cotton, wood, “Poweralls”
174 x 170 x 130 cm
Private collection
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Mark Lewis
© Jane Alexander
The sacrifices of God are a troubled spirit 2002–2004
Figures: Hobbled ruminant with rider, Harbinger with protective boots. Bird, Small beast, Guardian, Bat-eared doll riding a bat-eared fox wearing a black-backed jackal skin, and Lamb with stolen boots.
Plaster, oil paint, stuffed bat-eared fox
Components: leather, rubber strapping, irregular Gemsbok horns with skull fragment, rubber boots, walking sticks, cloth, felt, jackal tail, jackal skin, bat-eared fox skin, girl’s dress (optional), gold thorns, 200 pairs of new industrial strength gloves, 40 used sickles, 16 used machetes, sound recording of Gregorio Allegri’s choral arrangement of Psalm 51, Miserere Mei (c. 1638).
All Souls Altar, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York
Images courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Mario Todeschini
Harbinger with Barge and Imperial Landscape (North Sea) 2006
Figures: Harbinger, Custodian, Bird, Hobbled ruminant.
Fiberglass, oil paint.
Components: 46-year-old grain and/or coal barge, the Kadia (38 x 6 meters), 1000 machetes, 100 sickles, 500 pairs of new industrial strength gloves, international
maritime signal flag, emblem by Ishmael Fiifi Annobil.
Dimensions/arrangement variable
Images courtesy of Jane Alexander and the PMMK Museum of Modern Art in Ostend
© Jane Alexander
Security with Traffic (influx control) 2007
7.6 x 12 x 15 m
Figures: Official, Convoy (trade, x 3), Ghost, Monkey Boy, Hobbled Ruminant, Custodian, Scavenger, Bird, Beast.
Oil-painted fiberglass.
Components: triple diamond mesh fence; razor wire; steel; 1,000 machetes; 1,000 sickles; 1,000 used industrial strength gloves; 100 tire inner tubes; 1 knobkerrie carved from alien wood by Douglas Gimberg; 1 African Lynx pelt; found clothing; 20 cubic meters of European earth; 100 grams of African earth.
Image courtesy of the artist and Rafael Vargas
Photographer: Rafael Vargas
© Rafael Vargas
Frontier with Ghost 2007
Photomontage, fence José Palazón/PRODEIN
Pigment on cotton paper
45 x 65 cm
Private collections
© Jane Alexander
Security/Segurança 2006
Figures: Guards (Fabio Silva, André Luiz Marianno, Flávio de Jesus Bastos, Joeferson Goss Oliveira, Alessandro Messias da Rocha). Bird (oil-painted fiberglass).
Components: double diamond mesh fence; razor wire; steel; Brazilian earth; germinating/growing/dying wheat; 1000 machetes; 1000 sickles; 1000 South African worker’s used gloves.
Outer fence: 12 x 6 meters, inner fence: 10 x 4 meters
Photograph: Juan Guerra
Image courtesy of the artist
© Jane Alexander