Jo Ractliffe: The Aftermath of Conflict
Yesterday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition of work by South African photographer Jo Ractliffe. Featuring 23 images produced over the past 10 years, the show examines the landscapes of Angola and South Africa as sites of conflict and contention.
Focusing on the aftermath of the Angolan Civil War and the intertwined conflict known in South Africa as the "Border War," her photographs address themes of dispossession, history, memory, and erasure. The exhibition highlights Ractliffe's engagement with the land and structures of Angola's capital, Luanda, as well as with places in the Angolan and South African countryside where unmarked mass graves, minefields, and former military testing sites reveal the complex traces of the past in the present.
Left: Woman and her baby, Roque Santeiro market, 2007. Right: Details of tiled murals at the Fortaleza De São Miguel, depicting Portuguese explorations in Africa 2, 2015. These images are not on view, but can be seen along with others in the collection here. Photographs (c) Jo Ractliffe, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Aftermath of Conflict has been organized to coincide with the special exhibition Kongo: Power and Majesty, which focuses on works created by artists in
present-day Angola between the 16th and 19th centuries, opening September 17th. Information. The landscapes
captured by Ractliffe consider a more recent chapter of Angola's history.
The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe's Photographs of Angola and South Africa continues through January 3, 2016. Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, north mezzanine, Gallery 914 Information.
Also at the Met: In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa presents 100 years of portrait photography in West Africa through nearly 80 photographs taken between the 1870s and the 1970s. The show juxtaposes photographs, postcards, real photo postcards and original negatives taken both inside and outside the studio by amateur and professional photographers active from Senegal to Cameroon, and from Mali to Gabon. Among them are renowned artists, such as Seydou Keïta, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, and Samuel Fosso, and lesser-known practitioners who worked at the beginning of the century, including George A. G. Lutterodt, the Lisk-Carew Brothers, and Alex A. Acolatse. Information.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY. Information.