Tracey Rose
CrooningCroonCrooners (2005)
Made for an exhibition curated by Liza Essers at the Michelangelo Towers in Sandton, a five-star hotel in Johannesburg and titled The David Exhibition, artists were invited to respond to Michelangelo’s David. Rose decided to remove David from his plinth, to take him off his pedestal, which is visible in the photographs. She created three characters, one of which she played herself, and wrote a script rich with social commentary to be recited as a performance in the hotel’s adjoining mall during the opening reception, to which Thabo Mbeki, president at the time, had been invited. One of the crooners stood at the top of a down escalator and one at the bottom, and Rose, wearing tap shoes, climbed continuously against the downward motion, singing Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill until exhaustion forced her to stop, she was taken to the bottom, and was led away by her fellow crooner. Rose had been researching King David, who was actually a feeble old man and would not have been able to kill the giant Goliath, rendering false Michelangelo’s, and Western Art’s depiction of a strong, beautiful warrior. The famous statue is also uncircumcised, which is a further inaccuracy considering David’s Jewishness. The blackface makeup used in the photographs references the Cape Town minstrel carnival, Tweede Nuwe Jaar, which takes place every year on 2nd January. Rose takes a line of parody and mockery towards power, like the power David represents politically. Mockery is akin to David throwing his rock at Goliath, and Rose is asking how one can transform an act of violence into a poetic gesture.