“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
Cover:
Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Dust Tracing by Tammy Langtry (Arak Collection, 2025)
Dust Tracings is an publication by 2024 ARAK Curatorial Fellow Tammy Langtry which follows the encounters and paths of ten artists selected from the ARAK Collection, with exploratory texts on five of the artists.
This title, Dust Tracings, refers to the often seismic and settled forms of history, which are shaken with each action and step, as a measure of presence and its responses: to walk, water, frequent, traverse and interfere.
In this study of a selection of artists’ work, we zoom into what Langtry suggests as a symptomatic weather condition, dust—an environmental condition which is ever present, from historical periods of severe ecological degradation to our ancestors kicking up dust, and the transitions taking us all back into dust.
Dust Tracings straddles geographies, timelines and references, bringing together the social history of five states: Angola, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The related artworks, selected from the ARAK Collection, play the role of archiving, presenting and scribing notions of ‘dust’.
This is done through the art of Thebe Phetogo, Helena Uambembe, Isheanesu Dondo, Durant Sihali, Tuli Mekondjo, Samson Mnisi, Senzeni Marasela, Amos Langdown, Nelo Teixera and Rudolf Seibeb.