Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Small: Scale and Strategies of Subversion in (South) African Visual Culture

This research project takes as its point of departure the critical (re)activation of the small within contemporary visual culture. The word ‘small’ is mainly used to refer to things or events of a size considered less than normal. It is also used to describe that which is deemed insignificant or unimportant, with synonyms ranging from diminutive, limited, meagre, miniature, minuscule, and modest to paltry, poor, short, slight, minor, and even negligible. At best, the small is read as undemonstrative, unassuming, and unnoticeable. At worst, it speaks of extremes of precarity, deprivation, and disempowerment.

As a critical response to such conceptions, this project is interested in the idea, condition and intentional activation of small as a site of resistance. By galvanising small as a tactical refusal – a refusal to conform, live up or cede to the large and the monumental – this research investigates how questions of scale and weight (of reach and importance) bear on select creative processes and artefacts. This project draws on and is grounded in examples of visual and material culture stemming from the South African and larger African context that show such an interest in scale as a site of tension and socio-political engagement.

At the hand of key themes - such as small histories (or ideas and events), small intimacies (sexualities and desires), small politics (or refusals, alliances and ecosystems), and small things (objects, artefacts and outcomes) - and the work of select visual artists, this research project considers how smallness can be used to reconsider and counter the monumental (and monumentalising) impact of colonial and apartheid discourses in a (South) African context.