Dr. Esther Mahlangu
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Monuments and Museums for Post-Apartheid South Africa
Humanities 2013, 2, 72–98; doi:10.3390/h2010072 OPEN ACCESS humanities ISSN 2076-0787 www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities Article Creating/Curating Cultural Capital: Monuments and Museums for Post-Apartheid South Africa Elizabeth Rankin Department of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand; E-Mail: [email protected] Received: 5 February 2013; in revised form: 14 March 2013 / Accepted: 21 March 2013 / Published: 21 March 2013 Abstract: Since the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa has faced the challenge of creating new cultural capital to replace old racist paradigms, and monuments and museums have been deployed as part of this agenda of transformation. Monuments have been inscribed with new meanings, and acquisition and collecting policies have changed at existing museums to embrace a wider definition of culture. In addition, a series of new museums, often with a memorial purpose, has provided opportunities to acknowledge previously marginalized histories, and honor those who opposed apartheid, many of whom died in the Struggle. Lacking extensive collections, these museums have relied on innovative concepts, not only the use of audio-visual materials, but also the metaphoric deployment of sites and the architecture itself, to create affective audience experiences and recount South Africa’s tragic history under apartheid. Keywords: South African museums; South African monuments; cultural capital; transformation; Apartheid Museum; Freedom Park 1. Introduction This paper considers some of the problems to be faced in the arena of culture when a country undergoes massive political change that involves a shift of power from one cultural group to another, taking South Africa as a case study. -
South African Artists at the Constitutional Court of South Africa
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Decoding Memories: South African Artists at the Constitutional Court of South Africa A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in African Studies by Mary Ann Braubach 2017 © Copyright by Mary Ann Braubach 2017 ABSTRACT OF THESIS Decoding Memories: South African Artists at the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Mary Ann Braubach Master of Arts in African Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor William H. Worger, Chair This paper examines the decoding of the memory of apartheid and post apartheid years of South Africa’s recent history. And it contextualizes how the struggle influenced the visual arts. Also analyzed are the history of the Constitution and Constitutional Court of South Africa. It interrogates the formation of the Constitutional Court art collection. by Justices Albie Sachs and Yvonne Mokgoro for the yet-to-be-constructed Constitutional Court building in Johannesburg. Many donated artworks are responsive both to the anti- apartheid struggles and also to the new democracy. The essay also examines the underlying politic that now hangs in the Constitutional Court building. Select works, that function as signifiers of the new Constitution, are examined. I draw on interviews with South African artists, Court Justices and curators to investigate the role of memory, the archeology of the site, and the significance of the collection to the artists, the Justices, and citizens of South Africans twenty years post apartheid. -
An Exhibition of South African Ceramics at Iziko Museums Article by Esther Esymol
Reflections on Fired – An Exhibition of South African Ceramics at Iziko Museums Article by Esther Esymol Abstract An exhibition dedicated to the history and development of South African ceramics, Fired, was on show at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa, from 25th February 2012 until its temporary closure on 28th January 2015. Fired is due to reopen early 2016. The exhibition was created from the rich array of ceramics held in the permanent collections of Iziko Museums of South Africa. Iziko was formed in 1998 when various Cape Town based museums, having formerly functioned separately, were amalgamated into one organizational structure. Fired was created to celebrate the artistry of South African ceramists, showcasing works in clay created for domestic, ceremonial or decorative purposes, dating from the archaeological past to the present. This article reflects on the curatorial and design approaches to Fired, and the various themes which informed the exhibition. Reference is also made to the formation of the Iziko ceramics collections, and the ways in which Fired as an exhibition departed from ceramics displays previously presented in the museums that made up the Iziko group. Key words ceramics, studio pottery, production pottery, Community Economic Development (CED) potteries, museums Introduction Fired – an Exhibition of South African Ceramics celebrated South Africa’s rich and diverse legacy of ceramic making. The exhibition showcased a selection of about two hundred ceramic works, including some of the earliest indigenous pottery made in South Africa, going back some two thousand years, through to work produced by contemporary South African ceramists. The works were drawn mainly from the Social History Collections department of Iziko Museums of South Africa.1 Design and curatorial approaches Fired was exhibited within an evocative space in the Castle, with arched ceilings and columns and presented in two large elongated chambers (Fig.1). -
Between Colour Lines: Interrogating the Category 'Coloured' in Depictions Of
Between colour lines: Interrogating the category ‘coloured’ in depictions of District Six in the work of five South African artists Cameron Amelia Cupido Dissertation in fulfilment of Master’s in Visual Studies Visual Arts Department Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Prof. Lize Van Robbroeck March 2018 1 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. March 2018 Copyright © 2018 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract The Group Areas Act of 1950 radically affected coloured artists of the time, since it resulted in forced removals and the demolition of traditionally ‘coloured’ suburbs, and forced coloured people into mono-cultural suburbs with imposed identities not of their own choosing. This thesis seeks to uncover the complexities and heterogeneity of coloured identity and the effects apartheid ideologies and practices had on the personal narratives and cultural praxis of Lionel Davis, Albert Adams, George Hallett, Gavin Jantjes and Peter Clarke, who all emphasized the significance of District Six in their own articulations of colouredness. I propose that this problematic ascribed identity was at the root of most artworks produced by these artists and that their art helped them deal with their experiences within (and about) the space of District Six during apartheid. -
Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen
Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Anderson Gallery Art Exhibition Catalogues VCU University Archives 2010 Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen Siemon Allen Virginia Commonwealth University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/anderson_gallery Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons © 2010 Anderson Gallery, VCU School of the Arts. The Weave of Memory, Copyright © Andreś Mario Zervigon.́ Reprinted by permission. Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/anderson_gallery/1 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the VCU University Archives at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anderson Gallery Art Exhibition Catalogues by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 2 3 Imaging South Africa Collection Projects by Siemon Allen Ashley Kistler • Clive Kellner • Andrés Mario Zervigón Anderson Gallery VCUarts 4 5 6 7 CONTENTS 9-13 FULL CIRCLE Introduction and Acknowledgments Ashley Kistler 14-25 MAKEBA! 27-31 IMAGING SOUTH AFRICA The archival turn in Siemon Allen’s production Clive Kellner 34-39 RECORDS 40-43 IN CONVERSATION Ashley Kistler talks to Siemon Allen 44-55 STAMPS 56-69 NEWSPAPERS 70-72 WEAVES 73-79 THE WEAVE OF MEMORY Siemon Allen’s Screen in postapartheid South Africa Andrés Mario Zervigón 82 BIOGRAPY 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY 83 COLOPHON 8 9 FULL CIRCLE Introduction and Acknowledgments Ashley Kistler Filling all three floors of the Anderson Gallery, this survey offers the most comprehensive presentation to date of Siemon Allen’s collection projects, collectively titled Imaging South Africa. -
Sue Williamson BIOGRAPHY
Sue Williamson BIOGRAPHY Sue Williamson (b. 1941, Lichfield, UK) emigrated Passage, a large- scale installation of shackled, with her family to South Africa in 1948. Trained as suspended glass bottles engraved with details a printmaker, Williamson also works in installation, taken from 19th century slave trade documents. photography and video. In the 1970s, she started This installation was also exhibited the previous to make work which addressed social change year at Art Basel in Switzerland and at the Kochi- during apartheid and by the 1980s Williamson was Muziris Biennale in India in 2018. well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle. Williamson’s works feature in numerous public collections across the globe, including those at Referring to her practice, Williamson says: “ I am the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA, Tate interested in objects, often very humble ones, and Modern, London, UK, Victoria & Albert Museum, the stories behind them. I am interested in the London, UK, National Museum of African Art, media, in the subtext that runs behind newspaper Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA, reports, and in books which may seem mundane Wifredo Lam Centre, Havana, Cuba, Iziko South like a tourist guidebook. But most of all I am African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, interested in people, in their stories, and in the and Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa. exact words they use to describe their memories, experiences and expectations’. Williamson has received various awards and fellowships such as the Bellagio Creative Arts Williamson has avoided the rut of being caught in Fellowship 2011, Italy, Rockefeller Foundation, the an apartheid-era aesthetic, constantly re-assessing Visual Artist Research Award Fellowship 2007, changing situations, and finding new artistic Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA languages to work out her ideas. -
Willie Bester: an Artist Resisting the Injustices of Post-Apartheid in South Africa
Visión Doble Revista de Crítica e Historia del Arte Título: Willie Bester: An Artist Resisting the Injustices of Post-Apartheid in South Africa Autor: Ivette Pérez Vega Resumen: Willie Bester is regarded as one of the most important resistant artists against the injustices of “apartheid” and “post-apartheid” in South Africa. His artworks expose the state of extreme poverty in which the inhabitants of the townships of the Cape of Good Hope still live today, defining a strategy of opposition, as well as a means to generate a rebellious consciousness among his people. They present the oppression, violence and racial discrimination often misreported or ignored by the newspapers, law enforcement, and the South African government. Palabras clave: Africaan , Apartheid , Installation , Nelson Mandela , Painting , Sculpture , South Africa , Willie Bester Fecha: 15 de abril de 2018 Contacto: Visión Doble Revista de Crítica e Historia del Arte Programa de Historia del Arte Facultad de Humanidades Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras 13 Ave. Universidad Ste. 1301 San Juan, Puerto Rico 00925-2533 Tel.: 787-764-0000 ext. 89596 Email: [email protected] Web: http://humanidades.uprrp.edu/visiondoble Willie Bester: An Artist Resisting the Injustices of Post- Apartheid in South Africa visiondoble.net/willie-bester-artist-resisting-injustices-post-apartheid-south-africa/ Ivette Pérez Vega April 15, 2018 Introduction Willie Bester is regarded as one of the most important resistance artists working against the injustices of apartheid and post-apartheid realities in South Africa. The term “apartheid”—which is from Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa—literally means separation, segregation or “apartness,” and, more broadly, the official government policy of South Africa from 1909 to 1994 which rigidly controlled the movements and living conditions of non-white citizens. -
Africa-Lite: Cultural Appropriation and Commodification of Historic Blackness in Post- Apartheid Fabric and Décor Design
Africa-Lite: Cultural appropriation and commodification of historic blackness in post- apartheid fabric and décor design By Annemi Conradie Dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Visual Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Prof. Lize van Robbroeck Department: Visual Arts April 2019 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. April 2019 Copyright © 2019 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract Over the past few years, cultural appropriation has gained a degree of notoriety as a buzzword, after emerging into the wider public arena from academic, legal and political discourses. Internationally and in South Africa, debates arise predominantly around cases where historically asymmetric power relations are symbolically or materially re-enacted when dominant groups appropriate from economic or political minorities. This study examines the appropriation of colonial images of black individuals and bodies for commodification in twenty- first century South African décor and fabric design. A prominent trend in post-apartheid visual design, the re- purposing and commodification of archival photographs, and its circulation within local and global image economies and design markets demand further research and comprehensive theorising. -
Steve Biko and Black Consciousness in Post-Apartheid South African Poetry a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the College
Steve Biko and Black Consciousness in Post-Apartheid South African Poetry A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy T. Spreelin Macdonald June 2010 © 2010 T. Spreelin MacDonald. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Steve Biko and Black Consciousness in Post-Apartheid South African Poetry by T. SPREELIN MACDONALD has been approved for the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by Marina L. Peterson Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Ghirmai Negash Associate Professor of English Charles A. McWeeny Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT MACDONALD, T. SPREELIN, Ph.D., June 2010, Interdisciplinary Arts Steve Biko and Black Consciousness in Post-Apartheid South African Poetry (158 pp.) Directors of Dissertation: Marina L. Peterson and Ghirmai Negash This dissertation rethinks the legacy of the anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko (1946-1977) in terms of his influence upon post-apartheid South African poetry. Comparing Biko’s own writings on Black Consciousness and the poetry of contemporary South African poets, I show that Biko’s ideas have come to underpin a field of post- apartheid poetry that I call “Biko poems.” Two questions guide this investigation. First, what is it about Biko’s legacy that avails itself so potently to poetic elaboration? That is, what does Biko’s articulation of Black Consciousness offer that allows it to be so vigorously engaged within poetry? I address this question in Chapter One, positing that Biko’s early essays, published under the reoccurring title “I Write What I Like,” and under the pen name “Frank Talk,” model a form of performative writing crucial to his subsequent poetic legacy. -
The Silence of Colonial Melancholy
The Silence of Colonial Melancholy: The Fourie Collection of Khoisan Ethnologica by Ann Wanless Volume 1 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg 2007 1 Abstract Between 1916 and 1928 Dr Louis Fourie, Medical Officer for the Protectorate of South West Africa and amateur anthropologist, amassed a collection of some three and a half thousand artefacts, three hundred photographs and diverse documents originating from or concerned with numerous Khoisan groups living in the Protectorate. He gathered this material in the context of a complex process of colonisation of the area, in which he himself was an important player, both in his official capacity and in an unofficial role as anthropological adviser to the Administration. During this period South African legislation and administration continued the process of deprivation and dehumanisation of the Khoisan that had begun during the German occupation of the country. Simultaneously, anthropologists were constructing an identity for the Khoisan which foregrounded their primitiveness. The tensions engendered in those whose work involved a combination of civil service and anthropology were difficult to reconcile, leading to a form of melancholia. The thesis examines the ways in which Fourie’s collection was a response to, and a part of the consolidation of, these parallel paradigms. Fourie moved to King William’s Town in South Africa in 1930, taking the collection with him, removing the objects still further from their original habitats, and minimising the possibility that the archive would one day rest in an institution in the country of its origin. -
The Specters of the Mendi: an Attempt at South African Hauntology
The Specters of the Mendi: An Attempt at South African Hauntology Natalia Stachura Independent Scholar Abstract: The article is an ambitious and complex study of Black response to war trauma, occasioned by the tragedy of the Mendi, a troop transport sunk with great loss of life in 1917. The majority of the victims were South African Blacks on their way to the Western Front. The tragedy inspired a very powerful poetic response, which the author analyses in terms of an indigenous African modernism, and which later on prepared the ground for contemporary nationalist mythopoeia in the Republic of South Africa. Although the country was part of the British Empire in 1917, the position of the Black community was reminiscent of the nations in secondary theatres of war. The recurring presence of the tragic event in South African culture has been analysed in terms of Derrida’s hauntology. Keywords: First World War, Mendi, South Africa, death, modernism, sinking 1. Introduction: Haunted History The centenary of the First World War, in many countries, brought on a certain renewal of interest in the history of the conflict, in different forms of par- ticipation in the conflict between various, often very remote cultures entangled in the war by a complex network of political imperialism, global economy, and the idea of solidarity among European nations and their overseas dominions. Even if “in South Africa First World War centennial fever is extremely mild if not largely absent” (Grundlingh 2014, 1), mainly due to the relatively small importance of the global conflict for South African politics of the time, there is a constant flow of scholarly publications and events focussing not only on the nature of South African participation, located “on the periphery of the global conflict of 1914–1918, which played mainly Natalia Stachura “The Specters of the Mendi: An Attempt at South African Hauntology”, Polish Journal of English Studies 2.2(2016): 99–119. -
South Africa Briefing Packet
SOUTH AFRICA PROVIDING COMMUNITY HEALTH TO POPULATIONS MOST IN NEED se P RE-FIELD BRIEFING PACKET SOUTH AFRICA 1151 Eagle Drive, Loveland, CO, 80537 | (970) 635-0110 | [email protected] | www.imrus.org SOUTH AFRICA Country Briefing Packet Contents ABOUT THIS PACKET 3 BACKGROUND 4 CAPE TOWN 5 DURBAN 8 PUBLIC HEALTH OVERVIEW 10 SOUTH AFRICA AT A GLANCE 10 TOP 10 CAUSES OF DEATH 10 POPULATION GRAPH 11 INFANT MORTALITY 11 PUBLIC HEALTH 12 NATIONAL FLAG 14 COUNTRY OVERVIEW 15 BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 15 GEOGRAPHy 20 CLIMATE AND WEATHER 20 PEOPLE 21 ECONOMY 23 EDUCATION 25 RELIGION 26 POVERTY 27 CULTURE 28 SURVIVAL GUIDE 32 ETIQUETTE 32 USEFUL AFRIKAAN PHRASES 35 SAFETY 38 GOVERNMENT 39 Currency 41 IMR RECOMMENDATIONS ON MONEY 41 TIME IN SOUTH AFRICA 42 EMBASSY INFORMATION 42 WEBSITES 43 !2 1151 Eagle Drive, Loveland, CO, 80537 | (970) 635-0110 | [email protected] | www.imrus.org SOUTH AFRICA Country Briefing Packet ABOUT THIS PACKET This packet has been created to serve as a resource for the IMR South Africa Medical/Dental Team. This packet is information about the country and can be read at your leisure or on the airplane. The final section of this booklet is specific to the areas we will be working near (however, not the actual clinic locations) and contains information you may want to know before the trip. The contents herein are not for distributional purposes and are intended for the use of the team and their families. Sources of the information all come from public record and documentation. You may access any of the information and more updates directly from the World Wide Web and other public sources.