What happens when a museum shifts from being a place where culture is displayed to one where it is lived, questioned, and shared? This question took shape during a recent documentary screening of the film:
what remains through time: slowness and stillness, supported by the University of the Free State (UFS)
Centre for Development Support (CDS).
At the centre of this work is
Dr Anita Venter, Lecturer in CDS, whose relationship with these spaces has been built over many years. “I hold a long-standing relationship, spanning more than a decade, with grassroots building practice through the Meraka Cultural Village, and more recently the Sekoele Holistic Living Arts Centre,” she explains. “It was this relational history that made it possible to bring community knowledge and lived practice into a formal exhibition space.”
This shared history built deep trust between communities, artists, and institutions, allowing the project to grow into something far larger than a single exhibition or screening.
At the Meraka Cultural Village, founded by
Mme Sebabatso Mary Mofama, that sense of relationship is visible in everyday practice. Rooted in Setswana and Sesotho traditions, ‘Meraka’ refers to a cattle post, a place of learning, responsibility, and connection to land. Today, it draws people together in ways that strengthen shared understanding. “The cultural village brings people from different cultures together to recognise one another, to learn from one another, and to respect one another,” says Mme Mofama. “We are a community. We do things for each other, with each other.”
Her vision speaks directly to a broader national aspiration. “This is how we build a rainbow nation – not in words, but in how we live, how we share, and how we welcome others into our space,” she says, adding that meaningful coexistence depends on lived commitment. “If we are serious about building a rainbow nation, then that coexistence must be real.”
This lived experience of knowledge is conveyed in the work of visual artist
Sonya Mmakopano Rademeyer, whose exhibition
What Remains Through Time inspired the documentary. Her work engages with history, belonging, and responsibility, while inviting participation.
Her approach centres on collaboration. “My practice is collaborative. It is a communal voice, not just a human one, but one that includes other forms of life as well,” she says. What began as an individual concept evolved into something shared. “The exhibition began as a solo project, but it could never remain that. It had to become something held by community.”
For Dr Venter, this process reflects a deeper shift in how knowledge is understood and shared. The exhibition invites engagement through the body, through land, and through relationships. Moments such as the burial of cloth in soil, drawn from Nama practices of reconciliation, bring transformation into lived experience rather than theory.
At the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, the connection between community knowledge and the museum space becomes tangible and symbolic. A traditional cultural wall, built of clay and dung by community members, stands within the gallery space. “Building a Meraka inside the Oliewenhuis Art Museum was itself an act of decolonisation,” says Dr Venter. The presence of materials shaped by hand, land, and collective effort interrupts familiar hierarchies of what belongs in a museum.
Dr Busisiwe Ntsele, co-host of the premiere and a scholar in law, sociology, and human rights, reflects on the significance of this shift. “We must change the narrative. Museums cannot remain spaces that reflect only one perspective. They must become spaces where all people can see themselves,” she says. “It must not be a gallery of exclusion. It must be a gallery for everyone.”
Her own experience of the project highlights the power of participation and storytelling. “I never thought that art and I would intersect, but I’ve come to realise that all our stories carry art within them,” she says. “As black people, we often hear our stories only when they are reduced to memory. Here, we are telling them while we are still living them.”
The impact extends beyond the exhibition space into lived experience. “This work did not end up in a library where it gathers dust. It became something we could experience, something we could live together,” Ntsele adds. “What we are doing here is not just presenting knowledge. We are making history together.”
The Sekoele Holistic Living Arts Centre adds another dimension to the project. Built from natural and reclaimed materials, it reflects ways of building grounded in regeneration, care, and collaboration. For
Lenosa Mahapang, this journey also involves a shift in perspective. “These technologies were never primitive. They were always architecture, always science, always art. The only question has been who controlled the narrative – and we are taking that back.”
For the Centre for Development Support, hosting the screening reflects its broader purpose. Development support speaks to whose knowledge counts and whose futures are centred. The documentary continues this conversation beyond a single event, reaching new audiences in universities, schools, and communities.
As the event drew to a close,
Dr Karen Venter, Head of Service Learning in the
Directorate Community Engagement, offered a moment of reflection that gathered these threads into a shared understanding. She spoke of the exhibition and documentary as an invitation to engage more deeply with what we encounter, to question inherited ways of thinking, and to remain open to new ways of seeing. “Art asks something simple yet profound of us, to slow down long enough to notice,” she said.
In that moment, the audience was reminded that meaningful change often begins quietly, in how we see, how we listen, and how we choose to carry these experiences forward.