A research report submitted to the
Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts (History of Art) by coursework and research report
March 2017 / In the 1960s and 1970s, farm worker Nukain Mabuza created a painted hillside rock
garden on a farm between Barberton and Kaapmuiden, Mpumalanga, South Africa. He
transformed his dwellings, and rearranged and painted the surrounding rocks according
to a unified scheme of geometric and animal motifs with a carefully selected colour
palette. This altered environment went far further aesthetically, and lasted far longer in
time, than the signs and scars that might typically result from a farm worker’s dwelling
upon the land. His work arguably bears some of the hallmarks of an inhabited ‘total work
of art’.
I challenge the dominant ‘outsider art’ explanatory framework adopted by JFC Clarke and
re-evaluate the fragmentary archive of Mabuza’s life and work. Working from the
likelihood that no single context will offer sufficient grounds for situating Nukain
Mabuza’s particular creative practice, I assess the relevance of cultural, historical and
religious contexts, which might have shaped Nukain Mabuza’s personal vision and
contributed to the form of his expressive environment. Nukain Mabuza’s altered
landscape has suffered considerable damage – there is no longer any trace of the two
dwellings and the stile, and the paintings on the rocks have all but disappeared. My
project seeks to contribute to the scholarship on Nukain Mabuza’s work by extending,
analysing, interpreting and situating his inhabited painted environment within the
worldview of southern African Bantu-speakers, as a unique personal creative expression,
and as an expression of the artist’s modernity. / MT2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/23857 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Cuthbertson, Hazel Claire |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (xxii, 189 pages), application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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