Johannes Phokela (b. 1966, Soweto)

Porch Resolution

2021, oil on canvas, 122.5 x 91 cm.

On display at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town. Photo: M.Sobreira / Alamy Stock Photo ©Johannes Phokela.

First shown at an exhibition in the Goodman Gallery entitled OF TABLE MANNERS: AMIDST A TERRESTRIAL TWILIGHT, this painting is one of several in which Phokela plays on the social conventions of table manners established hundreds of years ago at the courts of France and Spain.  Each of the works brings an image or moment from European history together with a reference to contemporary inequalities, highlighting how absurd it is that we still accept these conventions as a yardstick of ‘civilised behaviour.’ It is the “moments of hesitation, discord and anxiety” they create which interest Phokela, and in Porch Resolution he contrasts their superficial nature with the life-and-death issue which is lack of food security in Africa. He adds to Rubens’ original composition of Two Satyrs (1617-19) a table laden with meat, cheese, fruit and bread, and a Black African with his tongue hanging out and hand making a pleading gesture.