56 | african arts WINTER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 4 Brenda Schmahmann is a professor and the NRF-DST South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the Univer- sity of Johannesburg. brendas@uj.ac.za An Arresting Portrayal Marco Cianfanelli’s Release at the Nelson Mandela Capture Site Brenda Schmahmann photos by Paul Mills, except where otherwise noted O n August 4, 2012, an extraordinary monu- ment was unveiled on the rural outskirts of the small town of Howick in the Midlands of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa (Fig. 1). Comprising ffy discrete black steel components, each between 6.5 and 9.5 meters tall, Marco Cianfanelli’s Release is approached via a paved pathway set between two embankments. While it is ini- tially unclear what the sculpture may represent, this changes as one proceeds down the pathway. When the viewer arrives at a spot some 35 meters in front of the sculpture, the work reveals clearly an image of Nelson Mandela’s face in profle, looking towards the west, the side where the sun sets (Fig. 2, Cover). Ten, as the viewer moves closer to the structure, the illusion disappears, and it becomes evident that the sculpture is in fact made up of a series of wholly abstract steel plinths (Figs. 3–4). Te location of Release is important. A few meters behind the work, just across the R103 motorway, a plaque is set into an unprepossessing brick structure that was erected in 1996 to mark the place where Nelson Mandela was arrested on August 5, 1962 (Fig. 5). Shortly afer his acquittal at the Treason Trial on March 29, 1961, a warrant for his arrest had been issued. Mandela had consequently gone underground. Making various trips to Africa and the United Kingdom to solicit support for the African National Congress (ANC), he also undertook military training to equip himself for the sabotage campaigns that Umkhonto we Sizwe, its recently constituted military wing, had begun to plan. Returning to South Africa, he spent much of his time from October 1961 hiding out at Liliesleaf farm, north of Johannesburg. His arrest occurred afer he had attended a Congress Alliance party in his honor at the home of a photojournalist in Durban and was likely the result of a tipof to the security police by some- body there. 2 Mandela was posing as a chaufeur for a comrade, Cecil Williams, as the pair headed back to Johannesburg, when they were pulled over by security police. 1 Although Mandela was initially sentenced to fve years imprisonment on charges of incitement and illegally leaving South Africa, he would in fact remain in prison considerably longer. While he was in prison, security police raided Liliesleaf farm and discovered material that led to his being charged with sabotage, and he received a life sentence on June 12, 1964. Te so-called capture site is thus the location that marked the end of the era in which Mandela enjoyed any immediate freedom of movement and would see him instead subjected to twenty-seven years, six months, and fve days of incarceration, mostly on Robben Island. Te portrait in Cianfanelli’s sculpture was based on several pho- tographs of Mandela that the artist found on the Internet, as well as a flm still. 3 Noting that it “reads as a familiar photographic image, structurally suggestive of his incarceration” 4 when seen from the front, when viewed from the side, the artist observes, “the design and arrangement of the columns create a sense or moment of fracture and release.” 5 Te idea of “release”—the title of the sculp- ture—which refers to both the liberation of Mandela from prison twenty-seven years afer his arrest and the emancipation of South Africans from apartheid rule, is thus invoked formally through the illusion of Mandela being discharged or dissolved. Erected to commemorate the ffieth anniversary of Mandela’s capture, Cianfanelli’s sculpture has in the space of just half a decade become a landmark monument in South Africa. Despite its remote location, it attracts busloads of visitors daily. As Christopher Till, director of the Apartheid Museum and a former director of culture for the City of Johannesburg, has observed, the sculpture “captures people’s imagination” and has in fact become “a place of pilgrimage.” 6 It is notable that hundreds of people came to the monument to pay respects immediately afer Mandela’s death on December 5, 2013. 7 One would indeed be hard pressed to fnd a person who has visited Cianfanelli’s sculp- ture and not responded positively to it—although South Africans critical of Mandela have presumably avoided it. In a country with a multitude of other monuments to Mandela, not to mention heritage sites that refer to the struggle against