Blocks, Openness, and the Art of Obstruction of Aaron Curme

Deliberate blocks and obstructions have been employed in various forms of art as a way of disrupting the illusion of a perfect life, as mostly exemplified by the film The Five Obstructions. In particular, Aaron Curme, an elusive artistic figure in South Africa, redefines the role of obstructions in visual arts with artworks shaped by an invisible canvas of metaphorical information walls and power structures, creating a transient clash with the contemporary patterns of African art. By using in-screen, pre-defined questions as information blocks between the expectations of the artist and the viewers, the artist seems to assume an anthropological perspective of obstructions to generate something new out of an absent communication. The final artworks are categorized to elicit satisfaction, even if the artist is more or less dissatisfied with the compromising or oppressive notions of African art. Art abstraction becomes an open interpretation of social disorder, a de-materialized and chaotic life that transcends the strict dualities of past, false epistemologies. There may be something or nothing at all in the materiality of art obstruction itself, but there is certainly a strong spirit of reclaiming the control of personality in aesthetics with a novel approach of post-African aesthetics. De-colonial and post-colonial African aesthetics should be radically de-Africanized from the major Eurocentric, racial influences that constrain the space of art, or what is considered as African art. Aaron Curme attempts to envision a new non-binary complex reality of fluid interpretations and meanings over rigid theorizations, pushing the boundaries of diverse interpretive schemes that may better serve people and their communities. However, people themselves should have the agency over their own power of will and this artist articulately expresses this novel, fluid, de-African contemporary reality. Keywords: Obstruction, Openness, Aaron Curme, Post-African Aesthetics.