Staff threatened to resign from a South African gallery if confronting drawings that interrogate "white male ideas" were not removed from an African art fair, writes Anny Shaw. Does the artist's goal of portraying "extreme polarisation" justify the offense he has caused?
'An exhibition of sexually explicit drawings by the white Cape Town artist Anton Kannemeyer, who is showing at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair this week, has been cancelled in Johannesburg.
The show, a joint display with Conrad Botes, with whom Kannemeyer co-founded the satirical journal Bitterkomix in 1989, was due to open later this month at South Africa’s Everard Read gallery but was pulled last week after staff threatened to resign, Kannemeyer says.
The artist acknowledges that the drawings are a “full-frontal assault” but says they were created to “break down white male ideas”. Rather than the government, “it is now the conservative community that censors you—bookshops, publishers, curators and galleries”, he says. Everard Read could not be reached for comment.' ... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper