Dan Halter

Dan Halter

Polonial Enterprise

Polonial Enterprise

Polonial Enterprise 2021 Photo by Garth Meyer

Ink-jet print on Hahnemühle 100 x 71,3 cm

This image shows me holding an Enterprise brand polony that has been partly unwrapped and has the words HUT TAX cut into the meat, which is the same colour as my skin.

South Africans and Zimbabweans refer to bologna exclusively as polony, although polony is typically made using highly processed meat. These processed meat products are typically an artificially bright pink colour, and are foods for low-income people due to their low cost.

In both Zimbabwe and South Africa early European settlers imposed a Hut Tax onto the indigenous population. This levy on every hut forced the local inhabitants to work for the settlers as part of the newly formed economy providing them with a workforce. In the colony of Mashonaland, now part of Zimbabwe the hut tax was 10 shillings per hut. This led to a rebellion among the Shona people that became known as the ‘First Chimurenga’.

At The Colony Shop

Polonialism: At The Colony Shop

Polonialism: At the Colony Shop (after Fischli & Weiss) 2021 Photo by Garth Meyer

Ink-jet print on Hahnemühle 100 x 71,3 cm

Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was fond of saying ‘Zimbabwe will never be a colony again’. As a result the joke ‘Zimbabwe will never eat polony again’ started doing the rounds. Inspired by this wordplay I created this scene based on a photograph (At the Carpet Shop, 1979) by the Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss.

In 1979 the Swiss artist team Fischli and Weiss began their long collaboration with the “Wurstserie,” composed of photographs documenting fanciful scenes featuring sausages and other meat products. Here an assortment of cold cuts become piles of rugs, while a trio of gherkins become discerning customers in a “carpet shop.” In playing with their food in this imaginative way, Fischli and Weiss produced a scene that is wonderfully silly and cleverly irreverent in its gleeful transgression of one of the cardinal rules of childhood.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266668

My version shows gherkin customers considering a slice of meat representing the colonial powers dividing up Africa. Scattered around them are slices of polony shaped like countries in southern Africa.

South Africans and Zimbabweans refer to bologna exclusively as polony, although polony is typically made using highly processed meat. These processed meat products are typically an artificially bright pink colour, and are foods for low-income people due to their low cost.

Dan Halter