Jane Alexander

African Adventure, 2000

In 2002, the Mercedes-Benz Award for South African Culture went to the South African sculptor Jane Alexander. The photo series African Adventure shows the Long Street in Cape Town, which was the artist’s social environment in the 1990s, into which photographs of her sculptures were incorporated on the computer. It was a quarter of shops, brothels, criminals, refugees, drug dealers and addicts, existing notwithstanding the control exerted by Apartheid. The title the artist chose is the name of travel agencies in the centre of Cape Town offering excursions to the national sights, but with the word ‘adventure’ denoting danger and threat. The elements relate to tourism, racism, proselytiziation strategies and aspects of war. Anyone walking past the panoramic photo collages will for a moment become part of South African reality of that time period, as Jane Alexander experienced it in factual and emotional terms. These photo collages merge both inner and outer reality.