Die kunsmedia en herinnering: verlewendiging van die verlede

[摘要] English: This dissertation is closely related to my studio research, the product of whichis an installation in the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery. The focus of myresearch is the ruptures that occur in the continuity of family memories.Seeing that my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's disease, thepreservation of private memories is extremely important to me. According topostmodern thought, history is not regarded as a single, uninterruptedtimeline. Different versions or narratives are equally important in thecompilation of history. Micro-histories and private experiences becomemeaningful to history and so is the preservation of these common documentsin archives. Thus the apparent divide between private and public history isblurred.As a result of South Africa's difficult political history and the particular partplayed 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 'excessiveremembering thereof (Ricoeur 2004: 452 �?453). Afrikaners are not allowedto forget certain past political events. The internalisation of the past is anattempt to suppress it, so that it may only be experienced in the public sphereof history. This suppression can, however, still be observed beneath thesurface of private histories, as well as in art works that seem to focus solelyon 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) addressaspects 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 thediscontinuities in history and memory in the private and public spheres.The structure of this paper is presented in various layers: layers of history, arthistory, private history, and art media. A group of art works have beencarefully selected to further the argument and visually realise the mutualinterplay of nuances. Each chapter focuses on a specific art medium that isused in the Nagedagtenis installation, as well as on questions concerninghistory, art history and private history.

[发布机构] University of the Free State