Abstract
This article engages with the haunting experiences associated with the Ntaba kaNdoda monument, not as a re-enactment to recreate past events, but as an exercise in critical visual arts intervention. It further unpacks notions of memory and performative memorialisation in the former Ciskei. Ntaba kaNdoda is associated with Dr Lennox L. W. Sebe, former president of the Ciskei, who remains a figure in post-apartheid South Africa. This article is also a response to this majestic monument—its visual representation and its materiality—which enabled a particular performativity throughout my work. As part of my practice I recite performative memories at an abandoned monument, retracing and recalling overlaid memories through commemorative re-enactment. Mechtild Widrich's conception of performative monuments, Lucy Lippard's sense of place, and Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire and milieux de mémoire inform the theoretical rationale of this article, expanding my research interest in the Ntaba kaNdoda memorial. I urge for a visual art practice that looks at the past to make sense of the present. I emphasise the importance of understanding how one encounters a commemorative marker such as the Ntaba kaNdoda monument when considering future memorials, especially when we engage with post-colonial commemorative markers, places, and photographic material.
The Debe Nek valley lies in an area known as Amalinde below the Ntaba kaNdoda mountain; this was the site of a battle ground between amaNgqika and amaNdlambe of the amaXhosa Kingdom in 1818. Nunn traces these stories by documenting, through photography, almost two hundred years later, the aftermath and legacy of the tragic history of the people and the places affected by land dispossession between Grahamstown, now called Makhanda, and the Great Kei River. The land of those who lost the wars stands empty, and they have been driven out, creating a space that is a ghost-place but still inhabited by the spirits of those who lost their lives during those conflicts. The past, which is a shameful history of sadness, desolation, and land dispossession, drove Nunn to embark on the process of reclaiming the narrative of the Eastern Capes history that still exists and haunts its people. Nunns images show the resilience of the human spirit over adversity and offer the viewer an opportunity to reco
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Even if history is traumatic, one has to come to terms with ones ghosts.
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Figure 3: Cedric Nunn, Ntaba kaNdoda Monument, Debe Nek (20132014). Ilford fibre-based archival paper, 40 x 50 cm (Courtesy of the artist and David Krut Projects. Image source: 56 Mama Figure 4: Cedric Nunn, Ntaba ka Ndoda, In the Vicinity of Dimbaza Township (2013 2014). Ilford fibre-based archival paper, 40 x 50 cm (Courtesy of the artist and David Krut Projects. Image source: Figure 5: Cedric Nunn, DebeNek and NtabakaNdoda, the Battle of Amalinde Was Fought in This Region (20132014). Ilford fibre-based archival paper, 40 x 50 cm (Courtesy of the artist and David Krut Projects. Image source: 57 Mama
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Nunns photography at Ntaba kaNdoda can be read as a form of resisting the imposed commemorative hegemonies found in memorial structures and places of memory or events associated with the traumatic past. From this perspective, it is an essential contribution to visual art culture and art history in South Africa. These examples illustrate Goldblatts and Nunns assertion that the camera has functioned as a tool against forgetting at the Ntaba kaNdoda mountain. The camera is brought onto this site not only to document but to disrupt the monuments presence as an undisputable memorial authority on Ntaba kaNdoda mountain. As art historians and practising artists, we record historywith or without the ceremonies of past events and manifestations of lives lived, even though they are absent in images of the present. The audience is called upon to observe traces of memories, which are proposed in the visual representations of this desolate memorial. We are not required to mark with stones or physic
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