CRASH
Origin by Chris Diedericks, 2006.
An exhibition by Chris Diedericks and Musha Neluheni.
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PRESS ARTICLE
CRASH : Collision of lives equals art
THE Academy Award winning movie Crash, which stirred much heated debate internationally, has inspired two Johannesburg artists to collaborate in an exhibition of the same name. The central collaborative piece of the exhibition by Chris Diedericks and Musha Neluheni is entitled "Crash".
The movie screened last year and dealt with issues of race and identity in the collision-course of modern society. It brought out hidden racial insecurities in many people. After seeing the movie, well-known artist, Chris Diedericks and young, up-and-coming artist, Musha Neluheni collided in a meeting of creativity that would eventually lead to the collaborative exhibition of photography, linocuts and drawings.
Neluheni won a merit award at last year's Sasol New Signatures competition and it was Teresa Lizamore, curator of the Sasol gallery, who asked if Neluheni would be interested in showing her work at Lizamore's own gallery, Artspace. "Of course I wanted to," Neluheni told Vuvuzela, and after Lizamore's suggestion that she collaborate with someone, the meeting with Diedericks was organised.
The artists contrast each other, both physically and in their artistic styles. Neluheni, a recent Rhodes Fine Arts graduate, is young, petite and more focused on the artistic interaction between the "self" and the "other". Diedericks on the other hand, is over six foot tall, older and more interested in chance meetings and found images.
Both artists, however, were profoundly moved by the movie Crash and, though the content of the movie itself did not form the central theme of their work, it was the idea of collisions that caused them to name the exhibit Crash.
Diedericks, whose work has been exhibited in France, Canada and Spain among other places, spent 15 days traveling through Ghana.
There he found a parallel between the movie and his "crash meetings" with people, places and images, a parallel that formed the central theme for his work.
Neluheni returned to Johannesburg after four years studying in Grahamstown, and it is her new interaction with the city and the crashes with it and its residents that inspired her works. "These silent crashes define our daily lives in this city and taunt the self to come out and face the other," said Neluheni, "both other people and the city itself."
The exhibition is decisively moving, with both individual and collaborative pieces depicting human and spatial collisions. Though different in style, the collision of the artist's ideas is an inspired one.
Written by ALEX BELL. Thursday, 11 May 2006.
From: www.vuvuzelaonline.com
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