The review of Dan Halter’s Domboremari series by Susan Tallman

Published in Volume 6, Number 6 of Art in Print. November/December 2016

With the graphic punch of a relief print and the elaborate line game of engraving, Dan Halter’s meter-tall linocut of rocks was a strong presence at the E/AB Fair in November. It came by both qualities honestly: the image that Halter spent a month cutting out of linoleum flooring was an enlarged reiteration of an engraving that had adorned every iteration of the Zimbabwean dollar for the entirety of its hapless existence.

A Zimbabwean artist who lives in South Africa, Halter uses a variety of media, though most of his work takes the form of tightly woven digital prints. His primary subject is the complicated interplay of cultural, national and racial identities that circulate in southern Africa, and his references roam from Guy Fawkes to African basketry to failed Google-map searches. He has made a large number of works that play on the appearance of the cheap Chinese woven-plastic carryalls that are a badge of immigrants worldwide (in Nigeria they are known as “Ghana-must-goes”; in Germany they are Türkenkoffers [Turkish suitcases]).

(Domboremari is not the only work in which Halter has used Zimbabwean currency: Computer Says No (2016) is a map of Zimbabwean farming regions, woven from shredded bank notes whose cumulative value totals 2,147,483,647, or 2³¹-1, the maximum declared integer in 32-bit computing, and thus the maximum possible score or cash amount in many digital games.)

The scale of Halter’s linocut necessarily calls attention to the familiar visual language of engraving, a European export that subsumed the world in its representations. And as a graphic enlargement of an official instrument of national identity and governance, Domboremari has echoes of KP Brehmer’s enlarged linocut postage stamp enlargements of the 1960s, but unlike Brehmer, Halter isolates the image from its function and doesn’t immediately reveal his source.

Anyone from Zimbabwe, however, would instantly recognize the Chiremba Balancing Rocks (one of a number of similar geologic formations that resulted from the erosion of softer stone around granite) as a vivid emblem of economic collapse.

Introduced in 1980 to replace the Rhodesian dollar, the Zimbabwean dollar began at parity with the U.S. dollar; by 2007 it was trading at 600,000 to one. Three successive devaluations did nothing to halt the fall, and by 2008 the central bank notes were in hundred-trillion-dollar denominations. Hyperinflation finally killed the currency altogether in 2009; today transactions in the country employ foreign currencies. The color variants in which Halter has printed his block—blue, pink and green—are a nod to the asymptomatically cheerful chromatic variation used to distinguish new currency from old after each devaluation.

Wikipedia notes that the high value Zimbabwean notes “have gained considerable interest from the numismatic community and buyers in general for its absurdity rather than the design.” Halter’s print relies on both—the absurdity and tragedy comprehensible to some, the peculiar visual grace available to all.

https://www.instagram.com/danhalter/

Dan Halter’s artistic practice is informed entirely by his position as a Zimbabwean living in South Africa. His work confronts his sense of a dislocated national identity, human migration and the dark humour of present realities in Southern Africa. Halter employs everyday materials that are familiar in Zimbabwe and the South.

Africa, adopting local popular visual strategies to engage with the politics of the history of oppression in Southern Africa that continues today. Halter’s work often exploits the notions of craft and curio within a conceptual fine art context.

Dan Halter was born in Zimbabwe in 1977. In addition to five solo exhibitions, Halter has participated in numerous group shows, including the US at the South African National Gallery, curated by Simon Njami, Zeitgenössiche Fotokunst aus Südafrika at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), 2009 Havana Biennale and Earth Mattersat the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. He has completed four international residencies in Zürich, Rio de Janeiro, Scotland and Turin. Recent exhibitions include the 7th Triennial of Contemporary Textile Arts of Tournai, Belgium and Dan Halter / Mappa Del Mondo at the Nassauischer Kunstverein in Wiesbaden, Germany.