Keely

Shinners's

Essay

on

Sue

Williamson’s

Exhibition

at

Iziko

South

African

National

Gallery,

Cape

Town

In a photograph, two chairs, draped in white cloth, stand sentry around a rubble heap—old fences, shutters, doors. The chairs belong to the Ebrahim family. In 1981, the Apartheid government forcibly evicted the Ebrahims from their home, Manley Villa—one of the last to be demolished in District Six, a historically multiracial community in Cape Town that had been declared a “whites-only area” in 1966. Sue Williamson’s exhibition at the city’s Gowlett Gallery, “The Last Supper,” displayed detritus the artist (who is white) had collected from the demolition sites (prompting a visit to the show by police). That detritus is gone now, though photographs of the exhibition remain. Photographs and, miraculously, these chairs.

The chairs feature prominently in a new installation called Don’t let the sun catch you crying, created for Williamson’s first major retrospective, curated by Andrew Lamprecht. Nearby, former District Six residents and their descendants are captured in a series of photographs, enjoying a meal of cupcakes and cool drinks in the brush where the neighborhood once stood. Despite a 2018 Land Claims Court ruling that ordered the government to address land restitution claims, District Six remains largely undeveloped. The community continues to fight for the right to return home.

In many ways, this retrospective serves not only as a survey of Williamson’s career but as a repository of South African social history over the past five decades. Take R.I.P. Annie Silinga. Williamson photographed the activist in 1982 as a part of “A Few South Africans,” a series of portraits of women whose role in the liberation struggle had been overlooked, of which postcard versions were distributed widely. In 1984, when Silinga passed, Williamson was tasked with screen printing T-shirts to be worn at her funeral. A decade later, with the family’s blessing, she created a grave cradle for Silinga, which was exhibited at the first Johannesburg Biennale before being installed at the gravesite. Some years later, the cradle was stolen and, probably, sold as scrap metal.

In many ways, this retrospective serves not only as a survey of Williamson’s career but as a repository of South African social history over the past five decades. Take R.I.P. Annie Silinga. Williamson photographed the activist in 1982 as a part of “A Few South Africans,” a series of portraits of women whose role in the liberation struggle had been overlooked, of which postcard versions were distributed widely. In 1984, when Silinga passed, Williamson was tasked with screen printing T-shirts to be worn at her funeral. A decade later, with the family’s blessing, she created a grave cradle for Silinga, which was exhibited at the first Johannesburg Biennale before being installed at the gravesite. Some years later, the cradle was stolen and, probably, sold as scrap metal.

This is an unusual life cycle for an artwork—from biennale to graveyard to scrap heap—but it is one that speaks volumes about South Africa’s thorny transition from racist authoritarianism to neoliberal democracy. That first portrait circulated Silinga’s image in defiance of a state that sought to repress it; the grave cradle was made in the wake of the first democratic elections and South Africa’s renewed visibility in the art world following the cultural boycotts; its disappearance signaled the nation’s failure to meaningfully redress the economic inequality that persists as a hangover of colonialism and apartheid. The piece has been remade for this retrospective, decorated with paper flowers encased in glass domes and etched with Silinga’s defiant phrase, “I will never carry a pass.”