Phutuma Seoka

(South African, 1922-1997)

Four sculptures (1989): 1. Black Head
2. Walking man, red shirt
3. Walking man, white shirt
4. Snake 150 x 79 x 56cm (56 1/6 x 31 1/8 x 22 1/6in) and smaller. (4)

Footnotes

Provenance
Museum of Modern Art Oxford.

Exhibited
Oxford, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, Art from South Africa, 17 June – 23 September 1990.

Literature
Museum of Modern Art Oxford, exh. cat., Art from South Africa, (London, 1990) 'Black Head, 1989' illustrated pg. 22.



Dr. Phutuma Seoka was born in Modjadji, in Lewbowa South Africa. He would use the time between his appointments as a barber, to whittle and carve the sculptures that would adorn his shop front. On seeing this set-up, curator Ricky Burnett selected Seoka to be included in the exhibition Tributaries: A View of South African Contemporary Art that was held at both the Africana Museum in Johannesburg (1985) and the BMW Art Gallery in Munich (1986). The exhibition was the first in apartheid South Africa where black and white artists were shown together on a national stage on such a large scale. On meeting the artist, Burnett commented:

"I think there's a sense of internality in these, an element of the slightly surreal. Certainly he always talked about animals from his dreams."

The focus of the exhibition was the inclusion of all strands of South African art practice: the trained painters of the Western academic schools, community project artists from the inner cities, and rural artists trained in more indigenous traditions. The exhibition was something of a watershed, challenging established distinctions between 'high' art and folk art.

Shortly after, Seoka was also part of Art from South Africa that took place at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1990. Once again, the exhibition was extraordinary in that it was the first and last contemporary art exhibition to be held in a foreign country during the cultural boycott enforced by the ANC, in protest of the apartheid regime. These guidelines were relaxed around the time of the Amsterdam conference 'Culture from another South Africa' (1987), and curator David Elliot from the Museum was able to organise a show that displayed works by over 65 black and white South African artists, Seoka included. Seoka garnered much attention with his works, in particular his sculpture Paul Kruger (1989). As a result, Seoka became an important figure of the artistic vanguard from South Africa at the end of the twentieth century.

This colourful, cartoonish mix-match of figures and animals convey a sense of the surreal. Seoka would often place nails in the arms and legs of his figures so they could have some form of quasi-mobility. The style of flat, painted wood is referred to as 'Shangani', however Seoka was not trained as a painter. Raised in the homeland of Venda, north-west rural South Africa, the artist instead took up the practice of woodcarving, the largest artistic export of the region. The people of Venda are said to have 'drifted down from the great lakes region, the Congo, and to have carried down the tradition of woodcarving'. The mountainous areas of the region mean there is plentiful material in the surrounding forests.

Bibliography
P. Savage (ed.), Making art in Africa 1960-2010, (Surrey and Burlington, 2014) chapters 41 & 42.
I. McLean (ed.), Double Desire: Transculturation and Indigenous Contemporary Art, (Cambridge, 2014).
Johannesburg Art Gallery, exh. cat, Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, (Johannesburg, 2007) pp.222.