THE TRAILER
Participation in The Vibration of Things, The 15th edition of the Triennale of Small Sculpture, Fellbach, Germany - http://www.triennale.de/en/artists/c/conradie-stephane-edith
The Trailer – Stephané Conradie – Artist Statement as it appears in the Triennale Catalogue
In her project entitled ‘The Trailer’, Conradie traced the trek of the Basters, a culturally mixed group of people who descended from indigenous Khoekhoe, European settlers, and freed enslaved people -- her ancestors -- to their final settlement in Rehoboth, Namibia. Accompanied by a trailer, reminiscent of past families migrating with ox wagons, it was loaded with objects that Conradie found in settlements along the way. All sorts of intimate household objects were collected which reflect the complicated history of the Basters, their close social relations and enduring wish to settle on land they could claim as their own: Delft crockery, miniatures of indigenous people, porcelain puppies, decorative glasses, ornamental vases, hugging figures, wooden animal figurines, souvenirs of colonial places, homemade curios and brass trinkets, to name a few.
With Conradie’s return to Cape Town, where the Baster’s migration story began some three centuries ago, and their eventual creolisation into a distinct cultural group, components of the trailer were removed to form the basis for a series of works. The collected objects from the journey were subsequently assembled onto parts of the trailer, reflecting this process of creolisation for Conradie: the meshing of previously distinct elements to eventually settle into a stable yet complex form. The objects found along the old wagon routes represent nodes of establishment and tropes of settlement: the grounding of domestic space on a claimed piece of land that others also contested. The disassembled trailer, too, represents the finality of stopping the journey and anchoring an identity to a place. The final enmeshing of trailer parts and found objects forms a vibrant aesthetic whole, glued, riveted and held together with resin -- an established community set into a dry landscape. But even if the Basters have found their final oasis in Rehoboth, the journey of their postcolonial identity has only begun.
Text by Brandaan Huigen
