Kendell Geers is a South African artist and anti-apartheid activist known for his politically charged performances, sculptures, videos, installations, and confrontational photographs. He has participated in many international exhibitions, such as the Johannesburg Biennale (1995,1997), the Venice Biennale (2007), and Documenta (2002, 2017).
Read MoreRaised as a white Afrikaner during the apartheid era, Geers ran away from home at 15 and joined the anti-apartheid movement. On finishing high school, he applied for the art school at the University of Witwatersrand to avoid conscription in the South African Defence Force. At Wits, Geers became an activist and joined the National Union of South African Students. To avoid prison for not being conscripted, he went to the U.K. in 1988 and then to the United States, where he worked for the artist Richard Prince for a year.
When Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were released from prison in 1990, Geers returned to South Africa and began working as a critic and curator, as well as an artist.
Using an abrasive punk sensibility, Kendell Geers often exploits in his sculpture politically loaded materials associated with state violence, resistance, and control, such as razor wire, broken glass, tyres, batons, and gunshots. These he ironically, poetically, and wittily mixes with his own autobiographical history as a descendant of the Boers. He aims for a moral ambiguity in his very layered practice and not always predictable ethical positioning. Social issues such as class, racism, power imbalance, and spirituality are reoccurring themes.
Bloody Hell (1990) was a very early performance where the artist washed himself with copious quantities of his own blood, acknowledging his blood ties to Boer racism and Dutch imperialism.
Self Portrait (1995) presents a smashed-off neck from a green Heineken beer bottle, a vicious barroom weapon that is, as its label says, 'Imported from Holland'. The title raises disturbing questions about the artist's psyche—a penchant for spontaneous violence perhaps.
Jesusfuckingchrist (2006) has a traditional Northern European crucifix of Jesus in his death throes, covered with the joined-up reversed and inverted letters of the word 'fuck'. Through decorative and graphic means, it expresses anger at the repressive and torturous values of Christianity.
Master Mistress of My Passion (2010), with sharp glass shards projecting out from the white body of a meditating naked woman, blends eroticism, attraction, repulsion, and fear. Contradictions abound in this ambivalent exploration of sexual desire and introspective examination.
Kendell Geers has participated in many solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include The Second Coming (Do What Thou Wilt), Rua Red, Dublin (2019); Kendell Geers 1988—2012, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2013); Irrespektiv, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), Ghent (2007); Heart of Darkness, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (1993).
Group exhibitions include Art Unlimited, Art 42 Basel, Basel (2011); 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); Documenta 11, Kassel (2002).
Geers' work is featured in the collections of the Johannesburg Art Gallery; Magasin III, Stockholm; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Art Institute of Chicago; SMAK, Ghent; National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens; Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), Antwerp.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
