Opening of Marlene Dumas' exhibition 'Intimate Relations'
Tuesday 5th February 2008
Thank you to the Standard Bank for this wonderful occasion. I’m really honoured by the presence of two great South Africans, Marlene Dumas and of course my good friend Judge Albie Sachs, who I admire very much. He’s a great source of inspiration.
It is so great that you all turned up for a ‘Dutch’ artist! Daarom zal ik ook een paar woorden in het Nederlands zeggen. Want ik ben al heel lang een groot bewonderaar van haar werk. Ouma (Oma), kent u Ouma? Ouma is één van de meest inspirerende schilderijen die ik ooit heb gezien. Het is mijn oma, het is uw Oma.
The quality of Marlene’s work is that she confuses us. She confuses us because there is no way to hide, nowhere to hide when you look at the pictures she has made. Because it confronts you with who you are. And it forces you to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes. You do not simply see yourself; you have to bare yourself as you are. And there are very few artists who are able to do that.
Her paintings have this incredibly humane quality of confronting us with who we are. With all our weaknesses and strengths. I think in this day and age in South Africa, and in the Netherlands, what we all need is the quality to be able to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes. The quality perhaps not to always agree with somebody else but to be able to see somebody else’s point of view. This is something that is very often lost, also in the Netherlands these days. We have a position, which is thé position, that is thé truth and you don’t want to see that somebody else might have a different truth, a different position, a different background. I think Marlene takes us back to what is essentially our human characteristic. What it means to be a human being. She shows us. Ouma to me is my grandmother, in her bare qualities of a human being.
And I think, through her work, Marlene Dumas helps us to understand what we need to re-establish as basic human needs in order to be able to understand someone else. In my analysis this is what distinguishes us from animals. That we are not only prepared to see the world through our own eyes, but also through the eyes of somebody with a different background.
If I look back at South Africa’s painful past there were times when people were not prepared to accept other people’s point of view. To look at the world through other people’s eyes. And in Europe’s past we sometimes have very painful experiences with people with exactly the same position.
You know the essence of being totalitarian, the essence of every 'ism' that denies a person’s freedom, is that it refuses to accept that there can be a different point of view. And Marlene’s work forces us to look at a different point of view. All she does is to force us to look at what it means to be a human being. And for all that, Marlene, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you very much.
Standard Bank’s Jaco Maree: I thank you minister, and spoken from the heart, I appreciate that very much…