This course uses specially selected artworks and instances of criticism to foreground some enduring intellectual questions that circulate in South Africa in the present, some thirty years after the first democratic election in 1994. Ideas are often best perceived in/as 'things' that work in the spaces where words alone seem insufficient. Following this line of thought, many complicated social questions and debates are well-served in the work of artists who produce art in expedient mediums to serve their expressive ends. The course visits artworks 'in the flesh' to both experience and interpret what news certain artists bring to our door through the interplay of concept on the one hand, and materiality on the other.
4 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
This course uses specially selected artworks and instances of criticism to foreground some enduring intellectual questions that circulate in South Africa in the present, some thirty years after the first democratic election in 1994. Ideas are often best perceived in/as 'things' that work in the spaces where words alone seem insufficient. Following this line of thought, many complicated social questions and debates are well-served in the work of artists who produce art in expedient mediums to serve their expressive ends. The course visits artworks 'in the flesh' to both experience and interpret what news certain artists bring to our door through the interplay of concept on the one hand, and materiality on the other.
Offered in Autumn 2025, Spring 2026 at Stanford University.