Rodney Brown

A Promise to Meet in Jozi

Re-connecting with Mphapo “Ra” Hlasane and his work put unblinkingly straight the often-winding connections between Art, education, political consciousness and activism in the US. He and a barrage of striking street dancers, poets, musicians, painters and photographers have deeply saturated our experience on this continent. They together make it clear that one should not dismiss the power and consequence of talent and craft.

Ra is an exceptional visual artist who traveled from Hillbrow, South Africa to the University of Michigan this past fall as a Moody Fellow. There to conduct research for an instillation that opened last month at the JAG (Johannesburg Art Gallery), we sent him off with well wishes and a promise to meet in Jozi.

To experience Ra’s work is to be frozen for a moment between his eye and his photographic lens. It is to be ushered by a historian and prophet, one who documents, predicts and creates a moment through the rendering of a photograph. Our group has been touched by his visual voice in a very particular way… he flips and spins the obvious on its head—he touches on Xenophobia, Racism, Life, Suicide and HUMANITY. It is beautifully melancholic and brightly sobering.

Rodney A. Brown – Co-Assistant/Teammate Pedagogy of Action 2009