An old Shell gas station is turned into a work of modern architecture

The first time I went to Johannesburg I was terrified of walking around the city.  I had heard so many frightening stories prior to going there that I was sort of paralyzed. Three years later, I had become braver, less prone to think that disaster was lurking at every corner, and Johannesburg had experienced a certain urban revival. Diane Frankel who is quite familiar with Joburg also accompanied me and we had a trustworthy cab and driver.

So we set out one morning to explore. Our first stop was a visit to the Wits Art Museum at the edge of the University of Witwatersrand’s campus in the bohemian district Braamfontein. The Museum had reopened that spring in a new building designed by the architects Nina Cohen and Fiona Garson. This art space had been many years in the making. With the government  providing little funding for museums it had been a long struggle. Part of the plan had been to help change the neighborhood and engage the city. The architects had had to merge three buildings; one of them was a car dealership/ gas station. Soaring ceilings, sculptural lines and full volumes defined the new quirky multileveled structure. The car ramp had been repurposed into a sweeping walkway leading to the second floor galleries. Anitra Nettleton, the director of the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa, which is located in the Museum, gave us a tour of the space. The Wits Museum is unique of its kind in South Africa. It has a broader mandate than most of the museums in South Africa. The collection was started in the 1960’s and is comprised of 9,000 pieces that include traditional pieces from all over Africa, contemporary pieces with an emphasis on emerging artists and a broad collection of beaded works. Its mandate allows a more experimental approach. Half of the new space is devoted to exhibition space and the rest of it is to state of the art, climate controlled storage and research and teaching facilities.

The display is overall minimalist. Contemporary works hang next to more established names of the South Africa arts scene of the later 20^th century in the sparsely hung main exhibiting space.
Just as we walked in we were greeted by Jackson Hlungwani’s  Altar of God, which is part of a shrine called The New Jerusalem and located in Mbokhoto. The wooden figures represent characters from Jackson’s mythology and are made out of found wood.  The artist who sees himself as part prophet, part artist requested that rocks from the original shrine be added to the sculpture.  This earthy work with the rocks arranged in a helter skelter manner did seem a bit incongruous against the cool and slick backdrop.

However, I liked the glass display cases, which showed the many artifacts to their advantage. I was immediately seduced by the design of the bright, playful, and abstract contemporary beaded headgear done by the Mikula collective in Durban.

The video still of a young man’s face covered with maize by Churchill Madikida is a recent acquisition. Madikida explores Xhosa’s rituals in this video “ Liminal States” of a young man force-feeding himself with maize to eventually regurgitate the staple meal. Madikida was a gang member who turned his life around by building on a natural talent for draughtsman ship and becoming an artist.

In the main gallery Willem Boshoff’s triptych The Purple Shall Govern looks stunning. He reproduced the lyrics from 49 anti-apartheid songs and slogans in Zulu and other indigenous languages across 3 large panels. Boshoff has had a life long interest in archiving language and researched protest slogans from the period for the piece.

Paul Stopforth became well know in the eighties for his politically charged work, which was repeatedly suppressed. He eventually left for the US. His portrait of a man Bather is at once repulsive, fascinating, and beautifully painted.  The hint of his body under water suggests to me what we cannot see, such perhaps the unconscious or hidden motivations..

We ended our visit with a tour of the huge storage space.  We quickly realized that most of the collection is kept out of site.  There was a dramatic shift from the lean and edited public exhibition spaces to the myriad of objects in the storage area.  We entered Ali Baba’s cave. A trove of beaded artifacts were all arranged in drawers and wooden sculptures of all shape, form and color could be seen carefully laid down on the floors which allowed for easy access and viewing. I can’t figure out why she was covered ! The wooden sculpture was carved out of one trunk of wood. It was my favorite piece in the storage.

After a snack at the museum’s café – the cupcakes were so tempting – we went wandering through the Braamfontein district checking out small art venues and the local architecture. We got a view of the Nelson Mandela Bridge.  It was time then to go to Durban, the next city in our itinerary.

Driving from the Dogon country to Bamako, which took us several days, we passed through the towns of Mopti, Djenne, and Segou where we saw stunning examples of Sudano-Sahelian architecture, mostly adobe brick mosques with elaborate mud turrets.  These mosques, or more exactly the original ones, were built at the time of the expansion of Islam during the 14^th Century.  Since they were built out of earth few have survived rains and floods. Most of the ones we saw have been rebuilt in their original style during the 19^th Century or the 20^th Century and were three tower type mosques with very little decoration except for palm wood sticks, which protrude from the main earthen body of the mosque and cover much of its upper surface. These sticks’ main purpose was to allow for the yearly re-plastering of the whole surface of the mosque. We saw the first impressive mosque at Mopti. It looked stunning and in perfect condition. According to Jerry Vogel, it was in too good condition! The walls were too straight, the surfaces too smooth, and they no longer looked the way they used to look several decades ago. New ideas of conservation and restoration are prevailing, and more resilient materials are being used and gradually the hand made look is vanishing.

A shaded spot by the mosque in Mopti!  Much more to Jerry’s liking in terms of authenticity, was the mosque in a Fulani fishermen village on an island on the  Bani river. I have to agree with him.We then drove to Djenne and saw the largest mud made mosque in the world. It was rebuilt in the 20th century after having been destroyed during the previous century.   It is now also being very carefully conserved and while we, visitors, might miss the historic veneer, and the accidents inherent to a more hand made process this new approach may assure the mosque’s permanence in a world where the ephemeral prevails all too often.  It is a typical hypostyle mosque with as many as ninety thick pillars of earth in the interior worship hall of the Arabic type. Entering the mosque it is the lack of any decoration that was the most striking. Here we are in the market place under a tree discussing our next destination with the three towers looming in the background. We then proceeded to the ancient town of Segou-koro where we got to see a mosque in a state of disrepair and we loved it! Call us contrarians. We were also difficult to please. We want to see old and historic architecture from a culture of earth: All buildings have been built of earth or “sun-dried bricks”. Yet we resist new methods that can insure that these structures do not disintegrate. Segou-Koro was the capital of the Bambara State founded in the 17th century. One of its palaces remains and has been preserved with more caution. The red clay surface reveals subtle hand made decorations which come as a relief in this otherwise stern architecture.

Moving away from the spiritual to every day life in Mali, most town and city buildings are cubic with terraced roofs since there is little rain and the roofs are often used to dry grass. While visiting one of the fishermen villages we saw children carrying the vibrant green grass to the roof, a welcome touch of color in this rather monochromatic landscape.

Houses in these villages so exposed to the elements seem permanently eroded or on the verge of melting away. Back in town, the edges are sharper, dwellings look relatively more permanent, and color is at times added in very creative ways. Color is used to attract attention: a bright green awning became the advertisement for a carpenter’s shop and a raspberry gate was the perfect background for signs of political activism. The otherwise drab stone wall along the river bank now enlivened with colorful cement grout became fun and made me smile.