Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
27 August 2021 | Story Angela de Jesus and Rulanzen Martin | Photo Artwork courtesy of UNISA Art Collection


Folds and Faults: An Exhibition of African Women Artists Examining Identity, Culture, and Heritage. 

Arts copy
   (Gwenneth Miller, Folds, Assumed abundance, 2019, Oil on canvas, 91,5 x 183 cm.)

The Johannes Stegmann gallery at the University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with Curate.A.Space, is proud to present Folds and Faults: An Exhibition of African Women Artists Examining Identity, Culture, and Heritage. The exhibition is a tribute to courageous women through the works of an all-female artist group. 

Carol Brown, Zinhle Khumalo from Curate.A.Space, and Angela de Jesus curated the exhibition, which will run virtually as well as at the Stegmann Gallery in the Sasol Library on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus.

Details:
18 August 2021-17 September 2021
Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Sasol Library,  University of the Free State. 

“The theme of folds has many layers – as a fold itself implies. Fabric is what immediately comes to mind, but the action of folding can take too many levels. This exhibition explores these complexities.” 

Background: 
The exhibition features artworks by women artists in particular – a second generation of female artists whose mothers were part of the era when the historic 1956 Women’s March in Pretoria chanted the song, Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo (You strike a woman, you strike a rock).

Looking back on those dark years of apartheid, we remember how women were disenfranchised and disempowered. There were only a few black female artists, and the protest art made at the time was mostly by men. The women were the caregivers who took care of domestic issues and were the nurturers of the future generations whose work is now featured in this exhibition. 

News Archive

Mekondjo! National exhibition to reveal the courage, determination, repression and torture of PLAN
2014-05-21

 
Angelina Angula ex PLAN soldier injured during the 1978 Cassinga attack - photo by John Liebenberg.

A pioneering exhibition by John Liebenberg and Christo Doherty is about to open on the Bloemfontein Campus. ‘Mekondjo! born in the struggle for Namibia’ gives South Africans their first insight into the lives of the men and women who fought against the SADF in the bush of Northern Namibia and Angola from 1966 – 1989.

This public exhibition presents eleven portraits of People’s Liberation Army veterans in the process of speaking about and coming to terms with their very different experiences in the Namibian War of Liberation.

When the People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) returned to Namibia after the UN-supervised elections of 1989, it had been fighting against South African rule for 23 years. Formed in 1966 as the armed wing of the South West African Peoples’ Organisation, PLAN had developed from a handful of poorly armed guerrillas to a sophisticated mechanised force. These soldiers fought alongside Angolan, Russian and Cuban soldiers against the SADF and UNITA. Since SWAPO’s election victory, the new government has mythologised the heroism of the armed struggle. The stories of the individual PLAN fighters’ experiences are only now being articulated, though.

Their stories are of great courage and determination against often impossible odds; but also of repression, torture, and disastrous decisions by the PLAN leadership.

The exhibition will be on display from Thursday 22 May to Friday 23 May for the duration of the Silence after Violence conference. The conference is hosted by the UFS Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont.

Date: Thursday 22 May and Friday 23 May 2014
Place: Centenary Complex, Reitz Hall, Bloemfontein Campus
Exhibition Introduction: Thursday 22 May, 14:00 – 15:30
Other viewing times: intermissions during the Silence after Violence programme

The public is welcome to attend.

* Spotlight photo: PLAN commissioner Nkrumah Mushelenga, Windhoek 2013 – photo by John Liebenberg

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept