Who are the gatekeepers of South African art history? What are the constraints imposed on cultural memory? These are two questions that come up in Lwandile Fikeni’s City Press article on the recent Black Modernisms show at WAM.
“If you are going to make the claim that this exhibition should be understood as black modernisms, then you have to be conscious of what your omissions are going to imply,” says art historian Same Mdluli when we meet to speak about the exhibition. “Not including someone like Ernest Mancoba, for example, you’re in essence erasing him,” she states.
Read the full piece here.
And a follow up letter by Bongani Mahlangu here.
