by Lizza Littlewort
ArtHeat has inside information which exposes the hidden plot behind the Art Fair. Secret recordings handed to Cape Africa Platform (organisers of the Cape 09 Biennale) could be devastating to the Joburg Art Fair. The two organisations are in a power struggle to take over the South African art world, estimated as being worth upward of a million Rands. Out of the two parties, Art Fairs tend to be only about the money, whereas Biennales are all about the art itself. But the Art Fair may be using subversionary tactics to co-opt both approaches in a bloodless coup.
Suspicions were first aroused when a press statement by Joburg Art Fair's Ross Douglas made reference to Damien Hirst's Sotheby's auction,
Beautiful In My Head Forever. This show made an obscene amount of money on the day before the art market went into free fall. To anyone following Hirst's career, it was clear this was a massive art work about the art market. Hirst first addressed this subject with his diamond skull, a staggeringly opulent momento mori commenting directly on the lavish spending as the global art world boomed and Hirst found himself in the middle of the vortex. But the skull was only a hint at Hirst's larger plan, which materialised at Sotheby's, culminating in his piece, The Golden Calf, which addressed the worship of money.
It became apparent to investigators that there are major parallels between the Sotheby's show and the Joburg Art Fair, prompting suspicions that the Fair may be a giant artwork, staged by in a bid to cover all bases between art and money and grab the South African prize for itself. Here is what the investigators have realised:

¬-The work is part of a long tradition in African culture. The colonisation of Africa was, despite the ideological gloss, simply a drive to circumvent African traders and gain direct access to raw materials, and simultaneously create new markets for European commodities. Africa's culture was irrelevant; its role in the bigger picture was simply to bankroll European entrepreneurs.
-This situation continues today as Africa continues to be milked for profits spent on cultural acquisitions in Europe.
-Attempts at staging Biennales in South Africa have consistently floundered, scuppered by a devastating lack of interest in local culture, not only from European entrepreneurs but also our own.
-As Damien Hirst so aptly reflected the global financial boom in his work, so The Art Fair demonstrates where Africa stands in global culture: a commercial outpost.
This proves that the Joburg Art Fair is in fact a massive art work of the Hirstian school. Not only that, it is a truly African art work, coming from an understanding a world view that only Africa could have produced. Part of its genius is that this work will stay true to the African tradition by going unacknowledged, even by the world's foremost experts. This is because they are all European and too chauvinistic to believe that anything this brilliant could come out of Africa. And neither will its audience at home.