Is a South African Artist an ‘African’ Artist?

S. Majara, the Young Lion of the (South African) Art Scene holds a closing to celebrate the success of his most recent exhibition. The party in itself becomes an improvised show when Simeon Majara, on an impulse, starts making mask lanterns from the left-over African masks that served as the raw material for his exhibition, Curioser (or, Curio-user). The eerie light from the mask lanterns seems to transform the party and Majara’s fashionable, multi-cultural group of friends starts challenging the authenticity of the artist. Contemporary South African issues are raised, such as the question of the origin of the masks: they are curios made in African countries and brought into South Africa through clandestine networks. Majara buys them in bulk and by sawing them to pieces, metamorphoses them into works of ‘Art’. Vladislavic simultaneously challenges the reader with abstract questions such as the identity of South African art in the context of the African Renaissance, and the concrete political reality of mass immigration from other African countries.Through the analysis of descriptions of works of South African art, this paper proposes a reflection on South Africa’s attempts to live up to President Thabo Mbeki’s call for an African Renaissance. Mayibuye iAfrica (come back Africa), the rallying cry during apartheid, translated the idea of both a return to Africa and a return by Africa. This paper will examine some of the complexities underlying this return, complexities mediated through fiction.