Review: Artworks, Music and Dance Offer an Immersive experience in BIRD/FISH in the Commemoration Church Hall at #NAF16

The first Standard Bank Ovation Award winner of the 2016 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, BIRD/FISH, is a solo exhibition by Kristin NG-Yang. The installation, prints, drawings and photographs can be viewed throughout the Festival, but for the first three days, these artworks were augmented by a dance performance by ReRouted Dance Theatre that took place in and around the installation.

BIRD/FISH is inspired by an ancient Chinese song in which a bird becomes enamoured by a fish. Carrying a cultural pedigree that extends back more than three millennia, the composition places two worlds side by side: that of water and that of air. These two environments are linked, but separate, with NG-Yang reflecting on this complex relationship all of the various elements of the exhibition.

This relationship between two distinct, but related worlds defines NG-Yang's fluid identity as a transnational, diasporic artist. Hailing from China, she came to South Africa in 1999. In China, she might be considered a South African artist, distinct from her father and grandfather who are both well-known artists in her land of birth. In South Africa, she might be considered a Chinese artist, subject to both Sinophobia and Sinophilia. Her autoethnographic exploration stems from the dual experiences of being a both a bird and a fish, by contemplating history with the eye of legacy on her work, for example, or in a fascination with race and culture even as her race and culture are a source of fascination. Consequently, NG-Yang's art offers the engaging perspective of a shapeshifter, a figure that appears in both Chinese and South African mythologies.

The photographs, prints and drawings are grouped into two separate areas of the makeshift gallery in the Commemoration Church Hall. The photographs work with layers of gaze: we view through a carved frame featuring ornamental birds and fish that are inclined either at us or the images themselves, portraits of a human figure with wings, who observe us while being observed by carvings of fish that float in the background. NG-Yang places us in a multiplicious position that is aligned to her own situation. We watch, while inanimate eyes stare back at us. We are left to consider how much agency we give to the eyes that seem to watch us, prompting us to start or reignite our own processes of auto-ethnography. The photographs also foreshadow the meditative position that the two dance pieces, on occasions when they are available, intend the audience to assume.

The drawings and watercolour prints comprise a series of shadow-like figures. Some are reminiscent of dancing figures, fish and birds while others are abstract shapes that seem to disappear into the paper on which they are drawn or printed. The imagery foreshadows the visual qualities that the dance pieces achieve through the ever-shifting positions of the dancers' bodies and the interplay of shadows and light on backlit drops of material.

Two dance pieces form a vital part of the BIRD/FISH experience. The first is more abstract, with the dancers moving in and around an installation of suspended plexiglass fish/birds, while the second, in which Bonwa Mbontsi's fish captures the attention of Tegan Peacock's bird, offers a more conventional narrative retelling of the legend that served as a catalyst for NG-Yang's artwork. The spellbinding performance begins by positioning the audience as birds, enamoured with the rippling figures behind the material. Later, as Mbonsti and Peacock dance a pas de deux between body and shadow, the multiple frameworks that characterise the photographs returns. Both pieces would work outside of the context of this exhibition as items in a contemporary dance programme. Even there, though, the installation of sculptures would need to remain an essential part of the presentation, along with the evocative musical accompaniment created specifically for BIRD/FISH.

Despite the challenges of the space itself, as outlined in an address before the dance performance by curator Juliette Leeb-du Toit, BIRD/FISH offers a contemplative experience, which becomes immersive when the dance itself begins. It is a pity that the dance performances are not being presented at the exhibition for the duration of the Festival. Despite the artworks being captivating works in their own right, a full appreciation of the thesis explored in BIRD/FISH relied, for me, on the integration of its various multidisciplinary elements.

BIRD/FISH can be viewed at the Commemoration Church Hall throughout the National Arts Festival. Entrance is free.