The Artist as Agent: Noria Mabasa and the Book

ABSTRACT

This article traces the multiple ways in which Noria Mabasa reaffirmed her creative agency after the publication on her in 2003 of a Taxi Art Book monograph without her knowledge. In support of the artist’s efforts to reclaim control over the ways in which her works have circulated in the urban art world, it pays careful attention to Mabasa’s own voice, effectively challenging the widespread tendency to ignore the idiosyncratic interpretative strategies commonly developed by marginalised rural artists. While exploring various intersections between Mabasa’s artistic production and aspects of her own gendered history, the article raises a number of issues related to the ways in which, and why, interpretations of her sculptures have either underestimated, or in some cases completely overlooked, the primary inspiration for her work in lived experience. Keenly attentive to events in her immediate environment, and in the public spectacle of media images, Mabasa has repeatedly turned to newspaper photographs and other popular sources for inspiration. For Mabasa, these visual “texts” have acted as mnemonic devices, encouraging her to “read” events in a variety of ways, sometimes as movements flowing through time, in other cases as isolated moments divorced from a larger sense of place and space. But regardless of whether she witnesses events first-hand in rural Limpopo, or draws them from popular media sources, importantly, her interpretative strategies often also include the practice of mapping personally constructed symbols onto her generally very complex, and often very emotive, narratives.

Keywords:

• Noria Mabasa
• artistic agency
• media images
• newspaper photographs
• urban art market
• rural artists
• clay sculpture
• self-portraits
• Domba initiation ceremonies