Portia Malatjie discusses the curatorial journey and collaboration with MADEYOULOOK for the South African Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, entitled ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana, 2024. Courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Photo by Bubblegum Club.
Portia Malatjie, the curator of the South African Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, discusses her curatorial vision for ‘Quiet Ground’, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring Dinokana (2024), a newly commissioned installation by the art collective MADEYOULOOK. In this interview, Malatjie reflects on the significance of this milestone, both for her career and for the broader South African art community. She delves into the intricate process of bringing this vision to life, highlighting the unique collaboration with MADEYOULOOK, whose work has consistently explored themes of land, blackness, and spiritual ecologies. As Malatjie elaborates on the thematic connections between historical land issues and contemporary debates, she offers insight into how ‘Quiet Ground’ resonates with ongoing national and global conversations, particularly within the context of South Africa’s complex socio-political landscape.
ART AFRICA: Congratulations on what has proven to be a successful opening of the South African Pavilion Exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale. How does this milestone feel and mean to you as the curator?
Portia Malatjie: Thank you very much. It has been an honour to represent the country in this manner. The Venice Biennale is the largest platform for art in the world, where many countries congregate to showcase their artists and explore issues pertinent to their country and the world.
Presenting ‘Quiet Ground’, and the commissioned installation, Dinokana, by the art collective, MADEYOULOOK, alongside numerous countries exploring similar ideas makes it all the more impactful and rewarding. It is so satisfying to work on a project for some time and to see your vision for the space and exhibition realised and so close to your original vision. The pavilion has achieved what we set out to achieve, and for that, I am grateful. The reception has also been positive and hugely gratifying for me, the artists, and everyone involved. 
MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana, 2024. Courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Photo by Bubblegum Club.
In light of this, talk to us about the journey to this moment and what it took to realise it. Especially in converging your vision as curator and the creative interpretation of that vision by the artist collective whose work is showing in the pavilion, MADEYOULOOK?
Well, as a curator who has been working for over a decade and a half, getting to this moment is a culmination of all those years of practice, all the skills gained during that time, the ideas explored, and the development of those ideas converged in this particular moment in various ways. I have long been thinking about ideas of ecologies of spirituality and what contemporary curatorial practice in South Africa looks like. The moment of curating the South African pavilion in Venice is a convergence of these ideas and my decade of practice. I envisioned creating an immersive space with a single artist and singular work that would become a powerful emotive experience. The single artwork needed to carry the space and ideas I have been working through.
Interpreting ideas of land and blackness about land and rehabilitating land does not always have to be violent. We have very generative moments and intimate and personal relationships with the land, so I invited artists already working with those ideas. MADEYOULOOK has been thinking about these black-lived experiences throughout its practice. Some of their works, such as mafolofolo: a place of recovery, presented at documenta looked specifically at ideas of land and another work called Ejaradini created in 2018, has had many iterations which look at black gardening practices. So, there was a convergence of ideas as opposed to the artists interpreting ideas I was thinking through.
What was it in MADEYOULOOK’s early work that made them the ideal artists to work with and to realise the pavilion exhibition as we see it now?
MADEYOULOOK has always had a conceptually rich and robust practice spanning a decade and a half. How they think about their artistic practice has always interested me – their projects do not always have to culminate in a physical or artistic object. They are interested in the idea and find ways to explore it best and adequately. This exploration culminates in workshops, community engagement, exhibition-making, and the creation of physical and artistic objects. It is this commitment to the idea that is so compelling. I find it generative when ideas culminate in a physical object, with immersive structures and installations that require interactive engagement from audiences and community members. When I conceptualised the pavilion, I wanted it to culminate in a physical object that would take over the exhibition space. Still, the artists could work through whatever best articulated this brief of land and land politics.
MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana, 2024. Courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Photo by Bubblegum Club.
The Curatorial statement seems to delineate a thematic connection between historical ideas of land, dispossession and displacement and ideas of collective peacebuilding and individual repair. How would you describe how this link could productively factor into or speak to the unfolding national debate on land and landlessness in South Africa?
There is an ongoing debate about whether previously marginalised groups want and deserve peace or whether they seek justice. Thus, I am reluctant to speak about the issues of peace and peacebuilding because, as the argument goes, that does not always mean justice or liberation. Peacebuilding also suggests reconciliation between two parties who were previously at odds and who have now resolved their issues, and it implies an egalitarian distribution of resources—which we know not to be the case.
I am highlighting healing that is not relational to one’s misery and precarity but rather self-reliant and self-directed (even if communal) repair. The exhibition highlights this: despite the lack of an egalitarian distribution of resources and the ever-percolating legacies of displacement and forced migration, people are perpetually finding ways of connecting relationally and claiming their being to the land despite ongoing displacement.
The current national debate about land in South Africa revolves around the lack of land and violence—a reality for most of the population. There is a call to highlight that, even in these moments of lack and violence, the discussion of land in South Africa is not static or one-dimensional—it is multitudinous and nuanced in how it is discussed and experienced.
Do you see any socio-political utility for the exhibition, its themes and messages for broader South Africa as it enters election season in the 30th year of our country’s experiment with democratic self-governance? How would you describe that utility?
To claim that ‘Quiet Ground’ itself might have socio-political utility in the country might be hubristic, especially considering that the arts—at least in the form that we are describing and discussing and in the specific ecosystem that the pavilion operates in—are experienced, consumed, and engaged with by only a small group of the country’s population. However, the exhibition’s themes of repair, rehabilitation, and generative ways of reconnecting with the land certainly have some utility. I am careful not to suggest resigning to the current status quo by suggesting healing. If we are not careful, ideas of repair might align with those of peace, which is not complete liberation but highly contentious and problematic. The exhibition premise is that the vast majority of the population still live in precarity without access to resources but find quotidian ways of being despite this lack. However, these forms of repair and rehabilitation do not mean that liberation is not still sought. 
MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana, 2024. Courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Photo by Bubblegum Club.
The main exhibition of the 60th Venice Biennale is organised under the title ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ by curator Adriano Pedrosa. How would you say your title, ‘Quiet Ground’, creates a connection, response or registers an interpretation of Pedrosa’s title from a South African perspective?
When we think of foreignness in the context of South Africa, we think of cross-border foreignness, especially considering the challenges we face with xenophobia in the country. But, in addition to the very serious issue of xenophobia that requires attention and remedy is the challenge of a massive population of Black people who feel foreign in situ, in the land of their ancestors, as it were. This feeling of foreignness is a result of centuries of colonial and apartheid-era displacement and forced migration, whose effects we are still feeling to this day. I wanted to focus on the multiple ways that people can feel foreign, but more importantly, how, despite this structural displacement, people can still find ways of homing and rerooting.
How do you understand the importance of South Africa’s participation in the Venice Biennale through its pavilion? What value does this international art event hold for the South African art ecology and the public?
The Venice Biennale – the oldest art exhibition in the world – is a gathering of nations worldwide. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t exhilarating to be in that setting, even as an audience member, to be exposed to that degree and quantity of art from across the world, all in one place. From that perspective, it is fantastic for South Africa to be conversing with other pavilions and share commonalities, tensions, and valuable exchanges. The value of this indispensable participation on an intellectual and cultural level and magnitude (by size) does sadly operate on an axis of inequality, where countries of the Majority World are often not able to participate in these conversations due to continued structural marginalisation. So, I am careful not to suggest that participation in such a monumental (by sheer size) event in the West is synonymous with having made it because South African art and artists have been making it since their artists began producing art. 
MADEYOULOOK, Dinokana, 2024. Courtesy MADEYOULOOK. Photo by Bubblegum Club.
You were in Venice for the opening week of the South African Pavilion Exhibition and the 60th Venice Biennale, which brought together 88 countries contributing to the national Pavilions. How would you describe this experience as a curator, and how have global art world stakeholders responded to the South African Pavilion exhibition?
I have never curated a pavilion before, so this has had practical implications on my experience as a curator in that it has broadened my scope quite extensively. While I have curated in South Africa, Europe and the US, curating in Venice has solidified the knowledge gained in these regions – each with a making culture of its own, and it is pretty fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) to witness. And curating a national pavilion has its rules, expectations, and surveillance that I foolishly did not expect. Being in Venice was very fulfilling. Though strenuous and exhausting, the installation process was satisfying as the work and pavilion came together as the multiple components collated to make the whole. Months of ideas, planning, drawing, architectural drawings, and sound clips suddenly emerged as this beautiful thing, and it is amazing to see. And the response from audience members was very gratifying. People walked in and were intrigued by the work and the space the artists had created, and it was beautiful noticing people discover the many layers that form the artwork. My heart was admittedly whole when I left Venice.
The South African Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale will be open throughout the year until 24 November 2024. In what ways do you see it or hope it will contribute to and shape conversations about the development and strengthening of South Africa’s local art ecology?
I hope the pavilion contributes to the discourse of curation and artistic practice in South Africa. I hope it contributes meaningfully to discussions of Blackness and Black being and the many ways we can approach discussions of land and its politics.
The exhibition will be on view at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia until the 24th of November, 2024.
