Sites of identity and resistance: urban community murals and rural wall decoration in South Africa

African Arts, Autumn, 2002 by Sabine Marschall

In 1977 Thomas Matthews wrote: "Mural painting in South Africa is a domestic art, identified with the dwelling and made by the woman who inhabits it" (Matthews 1977:28). Since then a vibrant and very different tradition of mural painting has emerged: community mural art. Before the 1990s this genre was practiced on a rather small scale, not least because of political repression and a conservative, rigidly regulated bureaucracy. (1) Now, however, it is flourishing in virtually all of South Africa's urban centers.

While mural artists and coordinators define the term "community mural" in various ways, they agree that the practice involves the local community to some degree and that the process of painting the mural is as important as its imagery. Both of these factors distinguish it from commercial or merely decorative urban wall paintings. (2) Community murals are often painted by groups that are highly diverse in terms of race, gender, age, and level of artistic competency. They can, by and large, be seen as part of a larger community arts movement in South Africa, which emerged in an attempt to provide an alternative art education program to ordinary people and to reach out into previously disadvantaged communities (Peffer 1995; van Robbroeck 1991).

This topic has attracted surprisingly little serious attention by art historians to date, but it has been extensively covered by journalists and researchers from other disciplines. These writers have looked at this urban art phenomenon in relation to the traditional homestead mural and even the historical rock painting of the San (Bushmen) of southern African (e.g., Frescura 1989; Loubser 1989, 1991; Felgine 1997; Deliry-Antheaume 1997). While some see these practices as largely independent of one another, others have been tempted to emphasize their links, even to the point of establishing a grand, more or less continuous tradition of southern African mural art, spanning thousands of years. (3)

Intriguing as it may be to view the current community mural as an extension, albeit much transformed, of the rural southern African tradition of wall painting, it is important to acknowledge the significant points of divergence. (4) In the rural practice (Fig. 2), a woman decorates the walls of her own homestead (Matthews 1977), and it becomes an extension of herself, a mark of her identity (Matthews 1979; Changuion 1989). (5) By contrast, urban murals appear rarely on private homes, but rather on public buildings and highly visible enclosure walls. They are usually collaborative efforts dominated by male artists, particularly in black communities. Individual self-expression is suppressed in favor of a mutual style and a theme agreed upon by the artists, usually in consultation with community representatives, sometimes with a sponsor.

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Likewise, the visual evidence reveals few commonalities. Urban murals are almost always figurative, often aiming for academic realism, while the rural paintings, especially those by the Sotho-Tswana (Figs. 3, 4) and Ndebele (Figs. 5, 6), are composed of predominantly flat, geometric designs. Even where figurative elements appear in the homestead murals, the artistic approach is very different. For example, the Ndebele images of objects such as airplanes, electric pylons, lamp posts, telephones, and Western homes are highly geometricized. Venda (Figs. 7, 8) and Xhosa (Fig. 9) line drawings of organic motifs, mostly plants, are also stylized.

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There are certainly connections between the rural and the urban mural based on the inherent properties of the medium. Mural painting, constantly exposed to the elements and dependent on the structural quality of its wall support, is by nature ephemeral. In rural areas it is traditionally a seasonal art form, renewed annually or with every new plastering of the house. Likewise, urban murals, although often executed with great effort and possibly financial expense, are not anticipated to last for more than a few years. Since a mural is considered a temporal work, it is rarely restored when damaged, but rather is painted out or over.

Stylistic Borrowing

Despite their broad differences, one stylistic connection between traditional African and contemporary urban murals can be observed. In an attempt to give urban murals or the spaces they adorn an "African" or "ethnic" character, indigenous mural traditions are sometimes appropriated in a literal or freely modified form. The sources are both San rock paintings and African homestead decoration, most notably Ndebele patterns (Figs. 10, 11). Such murals frequently address a tourist audience, as seen at a Durban beach pavilion, where Bushman figures, painted in traditional rock-art style, are depicted enjoying themselves sunbathing and surfing (Fig. 12).

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While Ndebele murals are usually characterized by a design that covers the entire surface, in most other rural wall-decorating traditions (such as Xhosa, Pedi, Hlubi, and Sotho-Tswana) the painting tends to be used as an accent, confined to specific parts of the homestead (Fig. 9). Ndebele doors and windows are surrounded by a painted frame, and the lower part of the dwelling is distinguished by a dado-like splash zone (Fig. 6). The concept of framing or bordering wall openings or the entire mural is frequently seen in urban mural art. Very often it is Ndebele patterns, literally copied or freely adapted, that are used for such bordering.