The South African artist’s mid-career survey is titled after her 2016 audio-visual work Shooting Down Babylon (The Art of War), which reflects on non-western rituals of exorcism and cleansing. The work explores themes which are prevalent in Rose’s wider practice, stemming from post-colonial entanglements such as repatriation, recompense and reckoning.
Over the course of her 25 year career, Rose has worked with film, sculpture, photography, performance, print, and painting. The body – often her own – is central to all of her work as site for protest, outrage, resistance and discourse.
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Her video piece San Pedro V – “The Hope I Hope” (2005), for example, shows Rose painted pink and dressed in leopard-print underwear, fishnet stockings and boots, playing Israel’s national anthem on an electric guitar alongside the wall that separates Palestine and Israel; the performance ends with Rose urinating on the barricade.
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She found international recognition in her 20s when her video projection Ciao Bella (2001) – a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in which she plays 12 female “apostles” including Lolita, Josephine Baker and the water spirit, Mami Wata – was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001, and much of her early work continued to subvert iconic works from art history as a way of exploring identity politics. The Kiss (2001), for example, reimagines Rodin’s sculpture with a mixed-race couple.
By drawing on familiar imagery and narratives, Rose dissects and challenges conventional historical narratives, prescribed perspectives and the notion of truth.
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The retrospective will show works spanning from 1996 to 2019, providing audiences with a comprehensive overview of the artist’s bold and revolutionary practice.
“Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon” runs from 3 March to 29 August 2021 at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town. For more information visit: zeitzmocaa.museum
Featured image: Tracey Rose, San Pedro V “The Hope I hope” The Wall, 2005, Giclée print, 84.91 x 63.46 cm. Courtesy the artist and Dan Gunn, London
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Millie Walton is a London-based art writer and editor. She has contributed a broad range of arts and culture features and interviews to numerous international publications, and collaborated with artists and galleries globally. She also writes fiction and poetry.