Between Pap and Polenta

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Notes

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by rosenclaire.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/rcin.

1 Pap, white, maize meal, is the traditional, staple, daily diet of 80% of South Africans and is regarded as “peasant” food. Italian polenta, yellow maize meal, in South Africa is, however, a refined accompaniment to a dish.

2 See http://www.africaemediterraneo.it/ENG/exhibitions/eng_exhib_transafricana.shtm.

3 See http://www.undo.net/it/mostra/16049.

4 Artist's statement speaker @rtlink Convegno Internazionale, Bologna 2000.

5 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni.

6 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes.

7 In 2008 Global Alliance petitioned the Vatican for an Apology for the Complicities in the Ethiopian genocide and again in July 2015. In May 2015 Ethiopian veterans again demanded an apology and compensation from Italy for its war crimes, in particular for the chemical attack.

8 See https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_difesa_della_razza.

9 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faccetta_Nera.

10 In 1988 the derogatory term fortress Europe was used to criticize EU immigration policy.

11 Krao, born in 1876, in then Siam (modern-day Thailand) had an advanced form of hypertrichosis, a condition that covered her entire body and face in hair. Known as “The Ape Woman, Darwin's Missing Link,” she was exhibited in freak shows in Europe as half monkey, half woman. Postcard is dated 1891.

12 Victorine Meurent (in essays on the work, is usually referred to as “a local prostitute” and Laura surname unknown, the Black servant). Meurent, an accomplished painter herself, had work accepted numerous times to the Salon of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and, on occasion, hung alongside Manet. She lived the last 20 years of her life (1906–1927) with Marie Dufour and purportedly jointly owned their house.

13 Italy has, as yet, no general awareness of these blatantly racist advertisements and products, which include stereotypical racial profiling and an almost theatrical idea of the happy savage on coffee cups, chocolate profiterole balls called “Bongo Bongo,” “Omino Bianco” washing powder showing a stylized Black figure in a snow-white shirt, most bleach products, and “Africa” dark chocolate biscuits.

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rosenclaire

rosenclaire ([email protected]) is a collaboration between South African artists Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky. Both artists moved to Italy in the 1980s where their collaboration began, establishing international artists' residency workshops in Italy, South Africa, and the United States. rosenclaire participated in two seminal shows TransAfricana (Bologna, 2000) and Afritalia (Molise 2003) working on issues of identity, borders, race, postcolonialism, and Italy's colonial genocide in Ethiopia. rosenclaire collaborate on occasion with William Kentridge and have exhibited extensively in South Africa, Europe, United States, and at the Dakar Biennale in Senegal in 2010. They are represented independently and collaboratively by the Goodman Gallery in South Africa.