Artist Candice Breitz Pulls Her Work From a Show to Protest the Museum’s Display of Art by a Convicted Murderer

Candice Breitz has joined
advocates protesting the decision to display a work by convicted
murderer and fellow South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa in an exhibition
at the University of Pretoria’s Javett Art Centre. To
show solidarity with the cause, Breitz has pulled her work from a
concurrent show at the new South African museum.

The opposition against Mthethwa is being led by South African
activist group Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce
(SWEAT), who argue that the display of the work is harmful to the
memory of his victim, Nokuphila Kumalo, and her still-mourning
friends and family.

In 2017, following a prolonged
trial, Mthethwa was found
guilty of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison for
killing the 23-year-old prostitute Kumalo in April 2013. Video
footage of the incident shows a man, who prosecutors identified as
Mthethwa, getting out of the artist’s distinctive black Porsche and
brutally kicking the young woman to death.

Breitz asked the Javett to replace her
video, Profile (2017)—made in response to her
experience representing South Africa at the 2017 Venice
Biennale—with poster based on the #SayHerName social media campaign
SWEAT began during Mthethwa’s trial. On Monday, Breitz told
artnet News the museum had removed her work but not put up the
poster. (A museum spokesperson told the Art
Newspaper that “the poster does not fit into the
curatorial premise” of the show.)

The controversy raises larger questions about what to do with
art produced by those who have done deplorable things—questions
that have occupied the cultural world in recent years. SWEAT’s
advocacy manager Lesego Tlhwale wrote in an op-ed in the local
paper the Daily
Maverick that “we believe that there is a need to
communicate our zero tolerance to gender-based violence, including
the consumption of art produced by perpetrators.”

The current exhibition marks the first time since the verdict
that an institution has displayed Mthethwa’s work publicly. The
painting in question, The Wedding Party (1996),
shows a bride being ignored by her husband and another man at her
reception and is included in the exhibition “All in a Day’s Eye: The Politics of
Innocence.” The exhibition, featuring work from the collection
of the retired financier Michael Javett, was organized by four
women of color: prominent South African curator Gabi Ngcobo and
researchers Donna Kukama, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, and Tshegofatso
Mabaso.

In a statement, Ngcobo
explained that she wanted to include the painting as part of a
critical examination of the Javett Collection, and as a way to
examine Mthethwa’s toxicity toward women. “Our intention with
showing Mthethwa’s work is with the sole purpose of presenting it
as ‘evidence’ that highlights how misogyny has played out in his
work over time,” she wrote. “We can see through his work, the
perpetuation of violence against women. We therefore elected to
utilize his work to present a psycho-social analysis that exposes
his violent actions as not emerging out of the blue. This work
stands as another piece of evidence that exposes his misogyny and
toxicity.”

Ngcobo noted that she and her team had revised the exhibition
wall text “to create more clarity” following discussions with
SWEAT. The text states that “despite hard evidence proving
otherwise, Mthethwa maintained his innocence by stating he did
not remember his deeds.” Breitz argues, however, that such
treatment “reduces Nokuphila to a short, bloody cameo
appearance as Mthethwa’s victim, a cameo within a more elaborate
narrative that completely centers Mthethwa.”

Regardless of the organizers’ intentions, SWEAT and Breitz
contend, the display of Mthethwa’s work serves to raise his profile
and potentially reinvigorate his market. (Mthethwa’s The
Wedding Party was last sold at auction in 2013 for
R89,600, or $10,107, according to
the artnet Price Database.)

“If Gabi Ngcobo, our country’s leading and most critical
curator, thinks it is okay to offer wall space to Mthethwa again,”
argued Breitz in a statement on Facebook, “then there will surely
be a plethora of less well-intended collectors and speculators who
will see fit to do the same.”

“101 Collecting Conversations: Signature Works of a Century”
and “All in a Day’s Eye: The Politics of Innocence” are on view at
the Javett Art Centre, the Javett-UP at the University of
Pretoria’s Hatfield campus, 23 Lynnwood Road, Elandspoort,
Pretoria, South Africa.

The post Artist Candice Breitz Pulls Her Work From a Show to
Protest the Museum’s Display of Art by a Convicted Murderer
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