Sue

Williamson,

Lebohang

Kganye,

on

Memory,

Storytelling

and

Forgiveness,

at

the

Barnes

Foundation

This exhibit is a curated conversation of the artwork of Sue Williamson and Lebohang Kganye – two women standing within different generations of South African artists. Williamson is more than twice Kganye’s age and she began her artistic practice in the 1970s during the apartheid in South Africa. Kganye is a member of what is called the “born free” generation; she began making artwork after South Africa had a democratic government for 20 years. This exhibit is all about intergenerational memory and cultural inheritance. It asks questions about the function, meaning, and structure of memory, storytelling, and forgiveness.

The Apartheid in South Africa created a severely stratified society of rigid racial segregation and was in effect from 1948 to 1994. White governments and political groups leveraged laws, power, wealth, and both state and civilian violence to instate and enforce this separation based on race. The minority White population received the highest privilege and status, while Black South Africans were relegated to the lowest strata of society. They were removed from their homes and forced to live in designated areas, not permitted to go into White areas. After decades of internal and external activism, Apartheid was dismantled in the early 90s and its official end is marked by the first democratic election with universal suffrage in 1994.