This is a summary of a conversation I had with Raimi Gbadamosi, a Wits professor and contemporary British conceptual artist and writer whose work address themes of identity and art theory. Continue reading A conversation with Prof Raimi Gbadamosi
None of the galleries had work by South Africans of Chinese descent Continue reading Searching for a Chinese SAn visual artist
Nothing good came out of today’s meetings. I am starting to think this project wasn’t well thought out. Is it not possible to write about the Johannesburg Chinese community without concrete information from them? I mean, why not, the West has been writing about Africa without bothering to ask for the African opinion. My feature article was meant to look at the consumption of art … Continue reading Confucius says boredom is the mother of creativity
The day started off well, there was a plan in place. We were to go to Hyde Park and meet with Emma Chen, a Taiwanese restaurant owner and art collector who moved to South Africa in the 1980s. Emma spoke to our class a few weeks ago about her experiences in South Africa since the 1980s. She explained the manner in which she dealt with … Continue reading What is ART and who decides?
Today I encountered three Chinese inspired ideas in Johannesburg: The Blackanese, a Chinese shipping corrugated iron container and Chinese lanterns. Blackanese is a fusion of black and Chinese or Japanese cultures. The first time I heard of the term blackanese was from Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. He was in Chinatown looking for some underground gangster called Jin Ping and he told everyone they were … Continue reading Blackanese in Johannesburg
When Fred de Vries, my mentor for the Chinese-Johannesburg journalism in-depth project, said “there is much more to Chinese art than the clichés, go beyond the clichés”, I got nervous. Was there more to Chinese art than Chinese fans, Chinese dragons, Chinese sculptures? Fred suggested I look into the “notorious” Chinese contemporary and visual artist Ai Weiwei and how the global community views him. “We … Continue reading Would the real DAleast please stand up
My initial excitement over the Chinese-Johannesburg in-depth project came to an end after I realised my initial feature idea would require six months to realise. I wanted to examine the culture of doing business within the Chinese-Johannesburg community and my multi-media would chronicle a Chinese owned tattoo parlour. This proved problematic on two fronts: there were no Chinese owned tattoo parlours in the greater Johannesburg … Continue reading The pitch and its ultimate disintegration!
When we were told our journalism in-depth project was on Chinese-Johannesburg, I was like this because I grew up obsessed with Chinese culture – and by culture I mean Chinese cinematography. My group’s topic is “culture and community” and I imagined I was ahead of the crew because I had seen “Once upon a time in China” a million times. The movie portrays the growing … Continue reading My China Obsession
Stories by Thuletho Zwane 