{"title":"A bout with the law: Marco Cianfanelli’s representation of Nelson Mandela in Shadow Boxing","authors":"B. Schmahmann","doi":"10.3828/sj.2022.31.2.06","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A sculpture that is more than five metres high and constructed from laser-cut painted steel, Marco Cianfanelli’s Shadow Boxing (2013) refers to a photograph taken by Drum photographer Bob Gosani in 1957 that shows a young Nelson Mandela sparring with Jerry Moloi, a boxing champion. Placed outside the Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg, where a young Mandela defended his clients, Shadow Boxing is also just opposite Chancellor House, where Mandela and fellow activist Oliver Tambo had their law offices between 1952 and 1960. Functioning together with the space, Shadow Boxing invokes a sense of Mandela’s experiences in the 1950s while simultaneously encouraging insights and reflections about the ways in which apartheid histories have had impact on the present. Inviting a metaphorical reading of Mandela’s engagement with the law by being placed outside the Magistrates’ Courts as well as his own law offices, Shadow Boxing, it is suggested, also encourages associative interpretations through its formal and material properties. It is argued that, while it depicts a well-known individual on a large scale, Shadow Boxing encourages a more participative and mnemonic engagement than is usual in public statuary.","PeriodicalId":21666,"journal":{"name":"Sculpture Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sculpture Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2022.31.2.06","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A sculpture that is more than five metres high and constructed from laser-cut painted steel, Marco Cianfanelli’s Shadow Boxing (2013) refers to a photograph taken by Drum photographer Bob Gosani in 1957 that shows a young Nelson Mandela sparring with Jerry Moloi, a boxing champion. Placed outside the Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg, where a young Mandela defended his clients, Shadow Boxing is also just opposite Chancellor House, where Mandela and fellow activist Oliver Tambo had their law offices between 1952 and 1960. Functioning together with the space, Shadow Boxing invokes a sense of Mandela’s experiences in the 1950s while simultaneously encouraging insights and reflections about the ways in which apartheid histories have had impact on the present. Inviting a metaphorical reading of Mandela’s engagement with the law by being placed outside the Magistrates’ Courts as well as his own law offices, Shadow Boxing, it is suggested, also encourages associative interpretations through its formal and material properties. It is argued that, while it depicts a well-known individual on a large scale, Shadow Boxing encourages a more participative and mnemonic engagement than is usual in public statuary.
Marco Cianfanelli的《影子拳击》(Shadow Boxing, 2013)由激光切割的彩绘钢材制成,雕塑高度超过5米,参考了鼓手摄影师Bob Gosani于1957年拍摄的一张照片,照片中年轻的纳尔逊·曼德拉正在与拳击冠军杰里·莫洛伊对打。“影子拳击”位于约翰内斯堡地方法院外,曼德拉年轻时曾在这里为他的客户辩护。“影子拳击”也就在总理官邸对面,曼德拉和他的活动家奥利弗·坦博在1952年至1960年间曾在这里开过律师事务所。“影子拳击”与空间一起发挥作用,唤起了曼德拉在20世纪50年代的经历,同时鼓励人们对种族隔离历史对当前影响的方式进行洞察和反思。通过将曼德拉置身于地方法院和他自己的律师事务所之外,以隐喻的方式解读他与法律的接触。有人建议,《影子拳击》也通过其形式和物质属性鼓励联想解释。有人认为,虽然它描绘了一个知名的个人在很大程度上,影子拳击鼓励更多的参与和记忆参与比通常的公共雕像。