State of Suspense: Clement Mohale

Clement Mohale (South Africa)

"State Of Suspense"

Mixed media on paper.

2020  

Overview: In the center foreground, a large young woman's head faces the viewer. She is flanked in the background by figures, evidently standing in line for water.  On each side, we see standing figures with heads in the shape of the coronavrius, perhaps indicating their infected status. Also on each side are visible traditional houses, suggestive of a peri-urban settlement or  rural setting. In the middle foreground, to the figure's right, a cook stove emits smoke, perhaps indicative that the wait for water is so long that the woman in line has time to prepare a meal.

 

Artist's Statement: The Pandemic has shown that universal access to clean water is critical for public health, sustainable development and economic growth. As the African countries has announced its lockdowns extensions until late this year, the number of those infected by the Covid-19 novel Coronavirus keeps rising. Authorities work around the clock to"flatten the curve" and prevent community wide spread of the virus,with public health messaging continues to stress the importance of hand hygiene and washing your hands frequently. But the lack of access to clean and safe water is providing to be a major problem challenge in Africa's efforts to combat the Coronavirus.

 

Urban populations are particularly at risk of infection due to population density and more frequent public gatherings or in crowded spaces like markets, public transport or places of worship. People living in urban poor slums which is the worst form of settlement are at risk. Also a millions of children succumb to diarrhea and cholera every year as a result of lack to access clean and safe water. Therefore access to piped water in every home is most government's pledge, but there is a long way to go before that becomes a reality. 

 

Pamela Allara; In Clement Mohale’s earlier submission, “Unprecedented Times,” for the TLC Student Collection (posted on the artbeyondquarantine blog on July 11, 2020,) a young woman holds out a pill to a  personfication of the coronavirus as if to say, “Can this provide a cure?” The drawing highlights the issue of the lack of available medicines for those affected by COVID-19, with a vaccine still yet to be developed. In Mohale’s recent work, “State of Suspense,” the same young woman faces out at us, while behind her waits a group of villagers, each with various containers for storing water. Standing among them is the personification of the coronavirus seen in the previous work. As an indication of the ongoing spread of the illness, a second personification appears to be standing on the left side of the group.  The colors Mohale has used for the woman’s face seem arbitrary, although I assume the highlights of green and red meant to be symboic. Hazardng a guess, I would speculate that healthy vegetative growth (green) is being threatened by the heat of the unremiting sun (red). But whatever Mohale may have intended for the colors to mean, they function to hold our attention, so we cannot just look away.

The work seems to me to be a companion piece not only to “Unprecedented Times,” but to Themba Kumalo’s “Waiting for Food Parcels,” as well, (posted on artbeyondquarantine on  May 25, 2020). There, too, we see a long line of people, in this instance faceless, waiting for the deliveries that will alleviate desperate hunger and prevent starvation As Mohale has stated, access to clean water is critical, not only for hygiene during the pandemic, but for life itself. The suspense, or anxiety referred to in the work’s title, is generated by the lack of assurance that government vehicles will arrive with the needed water (or food) supplies. The life-threatening need for water is indicated by the dessicated landscape; clearly there are no local sources available. Our young woman, whose cropped short hair may be an indication of malnutrition, stares at the viewer as if to ask, “What will you do to help?” “State of Suspense” is thus a call to action.

 

Mark Auslander: As Pam notes, in our recent commentaries on Clement Mohale's Unprecedented Times, she and I read the large standing figure with a virus-shaped head as the essence or personification of  COVID-19 itself, to which the young female figure was apparently making a kind of offering.  Now, in "State of Suspense," we see at least three figures bearing the coronavirus head.  Perhaps, gazing into the young woman's eyes, we are invited to enter her own mind, in which she apprehends her infected neighbors as bearing the spiked head of the virus. The unusual nature of the Covid-19 disease, of course, means that it is often impossible to tell who is infected, so the net effect of the image is to suggest the faceless anonymity of the infected, who could be anyone.  (As it happens, this is the classic scenario of witchcraft in many African cultural fields: no one knows where witchcraft lurks, and anyone could turn out to harbor its lurking, nearly irresistible dangers.)

 

Perhaps the central figure's anxiety over the dangers of infection is so great that her hair itself begins, again within her own mind, to agitate in a way that seems to be forming spikes, externalizing her own fear of catching the virus, and taking on the virus-headed appearance of her neighbors.  

 

The symmetry of the figures on each side of the central figure's head further suggests that we may be gazing into the young woman's own anxious mind, seeing through her two eyes what she sees with her mind's eye.  On each side we see at least one traditional dwelling in the distant background, and at least one figure bearing the ominous head of the Virus.  The relative sparseness of the landscape conveys a sense of dessication, as those assembled wait not only for physical water but the flowing blessings of Spirit that might quench their deepest longings during this long dry season of the body and the soul.

 

I am again struck by Mohale's skill at conveying the quiet dignity and resilience of township life, even in the midst of a prolonged crisis.  In contrast to the  fear and perhaps perspiration roiling the face of the foregrounded young woman, the background women and men are composed in a lighter wash with an economy of line that suggest patience and fortitude as they wait their turn for water, from a tap, pump, or well that is invisible to us.  

 

Although the dominant mood of the work seems bleak, I find myself wondering, in a very speculative mode, if there just might a beacon of hope before us. The artist's name suggests his roots in the Mohale clan, descendants of the founding sovereign of the Lovedu polity (in the northern Transvaal).  The Lovedu Modjadji, or Rain Queen, is famously gifted with the capacity as "Transformer of the Clouds" to call rain, especially at times of collective crisis, for her own people and others, near and far. As of this writing, the position of the Modjadji is currently vacant, as the nation awaits the coming of age of an appropriate princess. My understanding is that it is far from clear the succession will take place; in that sense, the entire nation is a "state of suspense" over its future.  Is it just possible that the central young woman in this image might be associated with a successful candidate Rain Queen, and that the hoped-for blessings of bountiful water from on high might yet be realized?

 

For further reading:

Dr. E. Jensen Krige and J. D. Krige. 1943.  The Realm of a Rain Queen. A Study of the Pattern of Lovedu Society. (Published for the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press.)