Kendell Geers

Kendell Geers’ work has, over the years, examined the proliferation of violence in the mass media and how images of violence have become banalised through media-centric methods of representation. Often his work references political issues, racial politics and violence in South Africa, his country of origin. Geers appropriates and edits information from a wide variety of sources: from history, literature and religion to media and film in order to challenge or subvert existing readings and enable new ones. 48 Hours is a wall-paper like collage of newspaper text. The work mundanely lists occurrences and victims of violence as reported within a 48 hour time period in South Africa and is a dry comment on how horrifying events are reduced to homogenised sound bites, and how difficult it is to render the true reality of such occurrences and create a sense of true empathy.

The Work of Art in the State of Exile, by Kendell Geers

“The Moment of Terror is the Beginning of Life” Front 242
“Only Anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically.Philosophically.” Anthropophagite Manifesto 1928

"Imagine you wake up one morning and your country has dissapeared. Your bed and house are the same and your neighborhood is almost the same, but your neighbors seem to have changed and the city is changing even as you get out of bed. On the news a man that you do not recognize is making an inaugural presidential speech, introducing a flag and national anthem you do not recognize and he is speaking about a country, yours, that you do not know. Very soon you will begin to change as well, for with this shift everything from your religion to your education, your understanding of your family and basically your entire value system will be influenced by the changes outside and effect you in ways you could not even begin to imagine last night. In less than a decade you will notice yourself speaking in a different accent and addressing the world in a different manner than your mother taught you and soon you will not even recognise yourself and the transformation will be complete.

This is not the scenario of a B-Grade science fiction film or some bad pulp fiction novel but the reality of so many countries in the world following the end of the cold war. The citizens of countries like South Africa, East Germany, USSR, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth have all experienced, within living memory these very extreme changes and in many instances even the borders of their countries have been redesigned."
This is an excerpt from the original text. For the full text go to www.kendell-geers.net

Corner Piece, 1994 / Security signs, tape / 200 x 200 x 200 cm /
Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery London. Photo: Stephen White

Kode-X, 2003 (detail) / Found objects, steel shelving, glass, concrete
and emergency tape / 300 x 511 x 559 cm / Courtesy Stephen
Friedman Gallery, London Commissioned by the Museum for African
Art, New York. Photo: Jean Vong