| Jane Alexander | |
| Birth Date: | 1959 |
| Birth Place: | Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Nationality: | South African |
| Notable Works: | The Butcher Boys, The Bom Boys, African Adventure, The Sacrifices of God are a Troubled Spirit, and Security with traffic (influx control) |
Jane Alexander (born 1959) is one of the most celebrated artists in South Africa.[1] [2] She is a female artist best known for her sculpture, The Butcher Boys. She works in sculpture, photomontages, photography and video. Alexander is interested in human behavior, conflicts in history, cultural memories of abuse and the lack of global interference during apartheid.[3] [4] [5] Alexander's work is relevant both in the current Post- Apartheid social environment in South Africa and abroad.[6] [7] [8]
Alexander was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1959. She grew up in the peak of South African Apartheid in the early 1980s. Growing up during the time of apartheid in South Africa, Alexander was sheltered from the police and street violence of the time until she moved to Braamfotein, South Africa to be closer to her university. Apartheid – an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness" - was a system of racial segregation in South Africa that lasted from 1948 to 1994. Apartheid legislation created separate educational institutions based on a person's skin color. Art instruction was included in the curriculum for whites, but not for blacks or Indians. In 1959, law decreed that only whites could undertake fine art training at universities or tech schools. In the late 1970s, art had to choose to focus on form over content or combating apartheid through art. From 1985 to 1989 – during States of Emergency – white artists like Alexander had greater liberties to challenge apartheid and bring awareness to the rest of the world through their art.[9]
Her interest in these issues influenced her subsequent installations and art pieces. Inspired early on in her career by the figurative works of George Segal, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Duane Hanson, and David Goldblatt. Alexander attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where she obtained a bachelor's degree and a Master of Arts in Fine Arts in 1982 and 1988. Currently, she is senior lecturer of sculpture, photography and Drawing at Michaelis school of fine art in Cape Town where she has taught since 1998.[10]
Mutilated by the violence of Apartheid, Alexander's pieces often contain opposing themes of attraction and repulsion, Human and Animal and Grotesque yet vulnerable.[11] The human-animals in her work can be seen as the inhuman nature of apartheid society.[12] The distinctions in Alexander's work between the victim and the victimizers, the oppressor and the oppressed are blurred. Her hybrid forms suggest the normalizing of the grotesque motricity of violence such as apartheid and the capability of ordinary individuals to become the ruthless aggressors when forming part of a collective with an agenda of oppression and violence. These grotesque figures do not horrify us because they are inhuman, rather, because they are so fundamentally human. Alexander's work also shows the potential for human resilience, empowerment and dignity in the face of violence, adversity, and oppression, as well as the insecurity, and fear of those in positions of power. Her human-animals send out warnings about the consequences of history and hint at possible futures. Her work portrays politically and socially charged characters without ever making her exact message opaquely obvious, nor does she use signifiers such as banners, slogans or propaganda images.
Alexander prefers to work with site-specific pieces, especially those with historical, societal or spiritual resonances and often produces work that can be interchangeable between different site-specific instillations.[13] Alexander does not put work on a pedestal and avoids any obvious barriers between the work and the viewer. In the past she was known to drag rotting carcasses into her studio for their bones. She casts or models her sculptures in plaster, building them to the proportions of her friends and colleagues, and paints her modeled figures with oil paints.[14] Other materials of choice ceramic, fiberglass, animal bones, and animal horns. She also uses found objects and materials in many of her pieces, such as shoes and garments. One of her figures even wore an authentic South African prison uniform.[15]
During the course of her master's degree in the years 1985 and 1986, Alexander produced one of her most recognizable pieces of art; The Butcher Boys. The Butcher Boys is a sculpture of three men with a grotesque appearance made out of plaster, all sitting on a bench. The piece comments on the bestiality and dehumanizing effects of violence in Apartheid era South Africa. In an article in The New York Times, Holland Cotter describes that "their bodies, white-skinned and muscular, are superb, but with suture lines running from navel to throat, also disturbing". This line that Cotter describes is a dark vertical scar that implies the larynx has been removed which would render each figure unable to speak. The piece includes exposed backbones as well as various horns on each figure, all of which were used from animals. The piece has one of the most widespread recognition in the South African National Gallery.
Created in 1998, Bom Boys consists of a number of small, standing, grey-skinned figures. Some figures are partially clothed and others are naked, and each wears a mask or blindfold. They are all looking in different directions suggesting isolation and abandonment. The figures in this piece refer to the vulnerability of the displaced children in Cape Town, which the artist herself had observed while living there. It is unclear if the figures are predatory, or preyed upon.
Made in 1999–2002, African Adventure is a site-specific installation originally made for the British Officers' Mess of the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, and later installed at the Tate Modern. This piece contains thirteen human, animal, and human-animal hybrids, as well as a wide array of found objects. The floor of the instillation is covered in red earth, and in the center there is a half naked man who drags a variety of farming tools behind him, and has a linen bag over his head, and a machete in his hand. This man may refer to Elias Xitavhudzi, a South African serial killer who murdered his victims with a machete. This piece is also said to comment on colonialism, identity, democracy, and the residues of apartheid.
The Sacrifices of God are a Troubled Spirit was created in 2004 for as a site-specific instillation for the world's largest Gothic cathedral, at the Cathedral of St John the Divine which is in located in New York. Alexander's was inspired by the architecture of the Cathedral, as were the seventeen other artists who created works for this exhibition. Alexander's instillation comprises six figures, including a lamb with scarecrow-like stick arms, wearing a white dress, red gloves, blue rubber boots, and a crown of golden thorns, and a tall slender human-animal hybrid figure, holding a walking stick and wearing black boots, with one straight horn with a flag at the end, and one horn that is curled around on itself on his antelope-like head. There is also a hoofed animal with bound legs who carried a battered looking monkey on its back, a tall monkey figure with black boots and a jackal tail, a small four-legged animal, and vulture-like figure without wings or arms, who has bloody feet. All six figures are arranged together standing on copious amounts of red rubber gloves, in front of a large painting in the Cathedral.[16] This piece was based in Psalm 51, a prayer for the remission of sins, with the lamb figure most likely symbolizing a sacrifice.
Inside the triple barrier fencing in Alexanders 2007 piece Security with traffic (influx control) there is dark earth spread on the ground which is partly covered by matches, sickles, gloves and inner tubes. There is also a diverse group of hybrid creates inside. Alexander created this piece in reference to a barrier financed by the European union and built by the Spanish government in Melilla, which blocks an entrance into EU territory. This piece is also likely a commentary on migration, surveillance, land resources and ownership, and exploitation.
Jane Alexander has won several awards during her career as a solo and group artist. Alexander has work displayed in several public collections, including the South African National Gallery, Tatham Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, and the public collection at University of Witwatersrand.
Awards include: