“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…
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Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Worldmaking within Politics of Sight and Space was curated by Sarah Abdu Bushra in 2020. Sarah was the inaugural fellow for the ARAK Collection Curatorial Residency fellowship. She is an Ethiopian curator of visual and performing arts exhibitions. Anchored through the contested definition and experiences of locality – as it informs the spatial as well as material narratives of artworks present within the ARAK collection, this exhibition attempts to trace the life of selected artworks from their spaces of creation and showcase the less documented modes of practices that birthed them. Through the work of outlining the arts ecosystem of three East African countries (Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda) and their diaspora, the exhibition focuses on what is particular about this triangular nexus, as it relates to the way artists produce work, the way they build/inhabit a studio, to how they form their networks.