The Highlights

Skip to content
  • Welcome to The Highlights, an online arts journal. Browse our archive below, read about the site, or send us an email.
Home
next
prev
  • Issue Author Title

    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • I have a collection of photographs of Johannesburg that I take each time I visit that infamous city. I go up as often as possible, for commissions, to exhibit, to work, to visit friends. Any excuse will do. I’ve never really gone there “to photograph,” but when I land, my camera is instinctively by my side. My senses are heightened: I notice the textures, the lighting, the noises, the ache of time on the buildings, the scratchings on the walls. There is a soundtrack to the city that echoes in my heart, of the pain of existence, a form of complex nostalgia. It feels like a kind of home.


        I am aware that all the perceptions I will present here are fundamentally flawed in their one-sidedness. They are observations of what I’ve seen in the changing and bustling life of the country that holds my early years. So with that in mind, I’ll attempt to relate what lies behind my personal picture of Johannesburg.

        Cape Town is where I’m from and where I still live. It has a strong energy, reinforced by the magnificence of the ocean and the mountains. However, despite its reputation during the struggle years of being the most liberal city of South Africa, the city is so obviously yearning to be something other than what it is: European. The government spends endless amounts of money on keeping up appearances and introducing bylaws that cater to tourists and protect the richer areas from “nuisance,” whether it’s begging, skateboarding, barking dogs, vendors, loitering, street art, climbing public trees, washing cars, or hanging washing in public. Politicians and policy makers continue to bolster the “safe” zones that Cape Town inherited after the fall of apartheid. Parodoxically, this only entrenches the segregation of the social classes; if you live in the wealthier zones you won’t have any idea what is happening in the outlying zones of Lavender Hill, Delft, or the township of Khayelitsha.


        This is not unique to Cape Town; similarities can be found in how the people live behind the electric fences and within the gated communities of Johannesburg city. But there is something else there. After the fall of apartheid, the Central Business District fell as businesses fled the city for fear of what it was becoming, and blocks of flats were subsequently overtaken by mafias who rented them out with little sanitation, overcrowding, and no regard for safety. The city became a high-rise ghetto, dangerous and dirty. The Red Ants came out in full force, viciously evicting squatters from these buildings, army style. Today, buildings stand empty. Outsiders are terrified of Johannesburg. There are the rumors, vicious stories, mental images of hijackings and post-democratic chaos. It’s a place riddled with fables, misconceptions, and contradictions. Yet some of its inhabitants are rewriting these notions and weaving in a new, brave and unapologetic energy that makes other cities feel dim by comparison. As in many cities, it is the youth who are not afraid to reinvent the present moment.


        When I was a child I would go up to Johannesburg from Cape Town with my mother to visit family. I remember the heat, the thin air, the fires on the side of the road, the dry grass. The first time I went on my own was en route to London. I was leaving South Africa to explore the world, to find myself. I caught a twenty-seven hour train. It was thirty-five degrees celsius. I shared a carriage with three fat African mamas who had religious ceremonies talking in tongues. When I got there, Rasty took me painting in the early hours of the morning. Mixed with the excitement of naive youth and freedom, I had my first real taste of Johannesburg at that moment. There is a strong graffiti scene that’s grown a lot in the last few years. You see a lot of productions there, and hardly anything gets cleaned. The council sees graffiti as something that can uplift the city, so they have a pretty progressive attitude towards it. Because of the harsh environment, however, there is not much street art. Only the tougher, more traditional graffiti boys know how to navigate the city’s threats and dangers. Hopefully, there will be more experimentation and street art in the coming years. There is infinite potential for it.


        Johannesburg has become my favorite place to paint, and on my escapades I would always photograph moments that caught my eye. I also started to document the anonymous scrawling that I encountered, in Johannesburg and beyond, of which there are four main types:

        — Stowaway graffiti: usually found under bridges in port towns, so not part of the Johannesburg photos, these images are some of the most profound, paintings of ships and tragic poems of escape and dreams of a better life.

        — Gang graffiti: also not as prevalent in Johannesburg, as the gangs are mostly situated in Cape Town.

        — Random scrawlings on walls: marks and thoughts left by random individuals inscribed with arbitrary materials.

        — Evicted buildings: messages left in the high rise empty buildings of Johannesburg, which speak of the people who were living in them a brief time ago.


        Scrawlings, above all, have been an influence on my work in and out of the studio. They are so direct. They are messages from those who have been made invisible by the system, and they are one of the treasures that I’ve found growing up in South Africa.

        Faith47 lives and works in Capetown. Her images reconstruct lost objects, broken-down cars, old factories and dusty side roads of forgotten towns. Faith investigates how humans interact with their environment, what scratches and memories they leave behind.

        Save article as PDF
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery