2010 Shebeen
Shebeen Queen from the Netherlands: Su Tomesen (EN), Maandblad Zuid-Afrika
Joburg and shebeens (EN), Holland Doc, online
Review in Business Art, South African Art Times, SA

2009 City One Minutes
Hé Blanc! (NL) and Hey Blanc! (EN) about Port-au-Prince, Holland Doc, online

Making my own history, Holland Doc, online
and more, check City One Minutes

2009 THERE (HOUNEK)
Various announcements and reviews in several Jordanian newspapers, JO

2008 Chinese Wall
“Have the pie (and eat it too)”, Amsterdam Weekly

2007
Master thesis, letter by Tineke Reijnders

2007 Oscarland
“Kunst te koop”, De Volkskrant

2006-2007 Li(e)ve
“Kunst te koop”, De Volkskrant
Terzake, Canvas television

2006 Godot in Cuba
“Wilde beelden schieten overal door de stad”, Dagbad van het Noorden

2006 WAS
“White line blow you away”, Amsterdam Weekly
Radio-interview Amsterdam FM

2005 Belgrade Correspondent
Radio-interview Studio B, Belgrado, Serbia and Montenegro

2005-2006 VLAG
2006 ”Eén minuutje”, Metro
“Enorme Nederlandse vlag de lucht in tijdens Over Het IJ festival”, frontpage Metro Amsterdam
VLAG, text by Sasha Bronwasser
VLAG, text by Jan Dietvorst

2004 Het Pad™
“Rustgevend en verontrustend bos”, Het Parool
“Winterboswandeling”, de Volkskrant
“Boswandeling in de geur van verschraald bier”, Metro
“Boswandeling in Amsterdamse discotheek”, Sp!ts
“Mechanische boswandeling”, Utrechts Nieuwsblad

2004 HUT
“Toch nieuwbouw op Ledig Erf?", Ons Utrecht
"Buitenkunst op een non-plek", Utrechts Nieuwsblad
“Ontmoetingsplek en podium” Lucas X

2003-2007 Ik mag niet klagen
Neighbourhoodstore/Burenwinkel in television program Loretta&Max
Publication in Pink Ribbon magazine
Interview and intervention in television program 6pack

2003 Parallel
Interview in Dagkrant Nederlands FilmFestival
Interview in televison program Suzanne at MEERtv

2003 Underground
“City scapes”, Financieele Dagblad

2002 Safe
Radio-interview Radio M, Utrecht

2002 Voedt de Kunst
“Haas krijgt wortels”, Utrechts Nieuwsblad
“Wortels: geschenk van dankbaar Utrecht”, Wim de Bie on his blog

2001 Het Pad™
“Bos in stad is kritiek op instant-ervaring”, Utrechts Nieuwsblad

2001 Heatwave, no.3
“Allereerste LomboKunstweekend geslaagd”, Utrechts Nieuwsblad

Shebeen Queen from the Netherlands: Su Tomesen
By Bart de Graaff

During the first three months of 2010, Dutch visual artist Su Tomesen lived and worked in Johannesburg as an artist-in-residence at the Bag Factory. There she created a shebeen – a township bar. ‘Because I like to do work on local topics. And because a shebeen is an integral part of daily life in Joburg.’
Tomesen’s idea to build a shebeen met quite some scepticism. People wondered whether a white, foreign woman would be able to create a lifelike shebeen. Tomesen proved them wrong. She created an installation which was operational for eight days. ‘It wasn’t really a shebeen,’she says, ‘it was my shebeen’. It turned out to be a dynamic work of art of which spectators formed the key elements. A work of art which was constantly changing and evolving.

Tongues wagging
Su Tomesen studied history at the University of Utrecht and fine arts at the world-famous Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. For the last ten years she worked around the globe as a video director and a visual artist. But she never got to go to South Africa, the land of Nelson Mandela (‘One of the icons of international pop-culture’). That is, until the beginning of 2010, when she had the chance to work for three months at the Bag Factory Artist’s Studios in Johannesburg on a stipend from the South African National Arts Council.
Tomesen is a keen observer and has the ability to get to know her surroundings quickly and intimately. The pictures and texts she uploaded to her blog during her stay in Johannesburg, bear witness to this. They cover a broad range of subjects, from typical South African sms-language to modern shopping malls and street hawkers, from rural Mpumalanga to the nr. one South African tourist destination, Cape Town.
One of her colleagues at the Bag Factory, Senzo Shabangu, showed her around Johannesburg and its black townships. Tomesen: ‘Most of the time, I was the only white in Soweto. But if we went out to eat in a sushi bar in the city itself, Senzo quite often was the only black. That really had some tongues wagging ... not an ideal situation, but on the other hand it was kind of interesting. It gave me lots of food for thought.’
Shabangu took Tomesen along to a couple of shebeens. And that’s where her fascination with these township bars -most of which were illegal during apartheid- originated. Three months later, when she ended her residency at the Bag Factory with an exhibition, she built her own shebeen and became the first ever Dutch shebeen queen.

City One Minutes
The Bag Factory was founded in 1991 in order to offer young (predominanty black) artists entry to the commercial art markets. Since then it has grown into a well-known and reputable institute. Four times a year three foreign artists are given the opportunity to work at the Bag Factory for a period of three months. These artists-in-residence are expected to exhibit their work before returning home and, furthermore, to take part in Outreach Projects.
Su Tomesen’s project consisted of making a series of 24 one-minute video portraits (each portrait representing one hour of the day) of Johannesburg. These were part of the so-called ‘City One Minutes’, an international art project which to date has already resulted in the making of over a hundred city-portraits all over the world.
Tomesen is no stranger to the project. She made ‘City One Minutes’ on a.o. Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Port-au-Prince and Beijing. ‘I like one minute, one shot,’ she says. That’s apparent form her one-minute video called Muscles, recorded between 24:00 and 01:00 in a shebeen. It shows a couple of men shouting and dancing enthusiastically to the tones of this Diana Ross song. The contrast between the fixed camera position and the dynamics of the dancing men results in surrealistic images. It almost feels as if human behaviour doesn’t affect the shebeen -which symbolises the big city- at all. But whether that was the artist’s intention? Tomesen: ‘Art is all about asking questions. Not about answering them.’

She’s skinny!
Back to Tomesen’s own shebeen. Some critics said she was ‘too white’ or even ‘too skinny’ to be a convincing shebeen queen. However, criticisms like this are most probably due to the fact that shebeens are not ‘fashionable’ in the South African art world anymore. That’s why it simply had to be a foreign artist who dared to tackle this theme again, according to the prestigious magazine, The South African Art Times. Tomesen did an excellent job. Her installation was a vibrant, living work of art. A happening. And that’s what all shebeens are: happenings.

Gold digger
Su Tomesen has become an enthusiastic ambassador of Johannesburg in her own home town Amsterdam. Two weeks after her return to the Netherlands she uploaded her last picture on her blog, a street scene depicting two boys dragging a gigantic blue, plastic bag through a Johannesburg street. ‘I miss you, Joburg’, she wrote, ‘Crazy, bustling, vibrant, happening, lovely city’. Just how much Su Tomesen loves Johannesburg, can be seen and experienced at her solo exhibition “Gold Digger in Joburg’ from 3 September till 22 October 2010 in the ‘Zuid-Afrika Huis’ in Amsterdam.

Original article: