# data[].attributes.headline
Body of Work: The poetry of Sydney Sipho Sepamla

# data[].attributes.subject
Body of Work: The poetry of Sydney Sipho Sepamla

# data[].attributes.body
Students will engage with a selection of 16 poems. Here are links to a few examples:
"To Whom It May Concern"
"Pimville Station"
"Nibbling"
"I Remember Sharpeville"
"The Soweto Blues"

# data[].attributes.body
Readers, writers, and texts

1. Why and how do we study language and literature?

2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, expressed and discovered?

4. How does language use vary amongst text types, and amongst literary forms?

5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?

Time and space

1. How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?

2. How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?

3. To what extent do texts offer insight into another culture?

4. How does the meaning and impact of a text change over time?

5. How do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

6. How does language represent social distinctions and identities?

# data[].attributes.body
Transformation: How might texts borrow from one another and what are the effects of this? How are we as readers being transformed/changed when we engage with a text?

Culture: How does this poem relate to the context of its production and reception, and to the respective values, beliefs and attitudes of the writer and reader?

Communication: What is the relationship that is established between a writer and a reader by means of this poem? Consider how the poet’s choices of style and structure facilitate communication with the reader.
Creativity: What role does creativity play in the development of the text?

# data[].attributes.body
Internal & External Imprisonment and Freedom
Oppression, Racism and “Otherization”
Protest & Revolution
Beauty, Creativity, Joy
Concept of Home

# data[].attributes.body
How can art and creativity serve as catalysts for social and personal change?

How might a poem be art for art’s sake, and also personal, and also political?

How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?

What is unique about poetry that allows it to convey messages that other genres cannot?

Do you believe that poetry can be an effective form of resistance? Why or why not?

How do we as readers transform the meaning of a text through our own interpretations?

How does the concept of "home" depicted, and what is the significance?

# data[].attributes.body
- Contextual understanding of South African History, including imperialism & Apartheid
- Comparison & contrast with American Jim Crow; connections to US current events and government response
- Basic biographical information about the poet
- Poetic devices, tone, satire

# data[].attributes.headline
Steve Biko & the Black Consciousness Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Steve Biko & the Black Consciousness Movement

# data[].attributes.body
“Black consciousness is, in essence, the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their subjugation--the blackness of their skin--and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the “normal” which is white...It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life. The interrelationship between the consciousness of self and the emancipatory programme is of paramount importance. Blacks no longer seek to reform the system because so doing implies acceptance of the major points around which the system revolves. Blacks are out to completely transform the system and to make of it what they wish.”

-Steve Biko, I Write What I Like

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela - Soweto Blues (Live 1988)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"http://www.miriammakeba.co.za/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Makeba ~ 2015 Siyandisa Music under exclusive license to Next Music (Worldwide digital distribution by The Orchard)"

# data[].attributes.body
How do Sepamla & Koloane explore the concept of space and its relationship to identity in Apartheid South Africa?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Toyi-Toyi Dance Revolution: The Rhythms of South African Protest | Ethnomusicology Explained!

# data[].attributes.headline
Learning Engagements & Learner Portfolio Activity Ideas

# data[].attributes.subject
Learning Engagements & Learner Portfolio Activity Ideas

# data[].attributes.body
- contextual explorations, including timelines and Google Earth "tour"
- students will explore art, music, and dance further, and curate their own examples (share via Padlet)
- online discussions of the poems & guiding questions; collaborative annotations
- personal reflections & asynchronous seminar via Flipgrid
- explore both connections and distinctions between South Africa and the United States (including both history and current events)
- write a protest poem based in our own context in 2020 California
- visually map out concepts & poetic devices used
- record questions & connections in the Learner Portfolio; practice framing good research questions and finding quality sources

# data[].attributes.body
- In this unit, students will practice close reading skills using a variety of genres, developing skills they will need for Paper 1.
- Sepamla's body of work offers many opportunities for further exploration in the HL essay (which we will introduce after this unit).
- There are also contextual, conceptual, and thematic links with our other works (Beloved by Toni Morrison & The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz), making Sepamla's work a good option for Paper 2.

# data[].attributes.body
Can we–hampered by our Western vision–appreciate the inherent beauty of a culture so different from our own, or does our perception of the wrongness of human oppression blind us to this?

# data[].attributes.body
Two resources with collections of protest posters: Medu Art Ensemble + Northwestern University’s Library of African Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster | The Art Institute of Chicago

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first-ever exhibition in North America dedicated to the graphic work of the Medu Art Ensemble-an artist collective developed in opposition to South African apartheid-showcases the group's oppositional creativity in both word and image.

# data[].attributes.body
How do we define these terms?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Turner Contemporary Gallery hosts an exhibit exploring the U.S. civil rights movement, as well as two installations from contemporary Black British artists who find inspiration in the local community.

The Turner's exhibition "Margate to Minneapolis" features more than 100 signs carried by protesters at Black Lives Matter marches in Britain. Credit... People Dem Collective

MARGATE, England - When the artists Kelly Abbott and Victoria Barrow Williams heard that the Turner Contemporary Gallery was hosting an exhibition focused on art associated with the civil rights movement in the American South, they felt confused.

"We thought they missed a trick by making it so Americanized," Ms. Abbott said in an interview. "There's a rich Black British history here."

So the two, who are also the directors of People Dem Collective, a Margate-based group that supports Black and brown people across Britain, approached the museum with an idea for an additional exhibit to accompany " We Will Walk - Art and Resistance in the American South " - one that would resonate more with the artists' experiences as Black British women.

Image

Kelly Abbott, left, and Victoria Barrow Williams said that part of their aim was to encourage exhibition visitors to actively fight against racism. Credit... Inky Durant, via People Dem Collective

"We Will Walk" - which covers four rooms and includes 110 works - pairs photos and music from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s with work made by Black artists in Alabama and other Southern U.S. states during that period and in the decades following. A third installment, " Place, Space and Who," features five large portraits of Black women and girls living in the Margate area, drawn onto the gallery's walls by the British artist Barbara Walker.

On view at the gallery until Sept. 6, the exhibitions offer diverse responses to continuing debates about how Britons view and understand both Blackness and the works of Black artists, at a moment when Britain is being asked to reckon with its history of colonialism and slavery.

It remains uncommon to see exhibitions devoted to works by Black artists in a mainstream gallery space like the Turner: Ms. Walker's commission is the fourth in the museum's nine-year history to spotlight the work of a single Black artist.

When the Turner Contemporary Gallery closed in March because of the coronavirus, so did both "We Will Walk," which originally opened in February, and "Place, Space and Who," which opened last September. By the time the museum reopened, on July 22, work was already underway on the installation of "Margate to Minneapolis," which opened on Aug. 1. Ms. Abbott and Ms. Barrow Williams had proposed the idea for the exhibit only a few weeks earlier.

The museum, which opened in 2011, is credited with hastening the recent regeneration of Margate, a poor seaside town that in previous centuries was a favorite with British vacationers.

With "Margate to Minneapolis," Ms. Abbott and Ms. Barrow Williams wanted to highlight the efforts of the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Margate and nearby towns, and to encourage visitors to actively fight against systemic racism.

Many of the handmade signs - which hang from the ceiling, echoing the way protesters held them aloft - point to Britain's history of anti-Black racism, emblazoned with slogans like "The U.K. is not innocent" and "Built on racism" next to the British flag. A video projected onto a wall shows footage from the marches, and a large banner nearby lists the names of Black people killed by the police in Britain.

On entry to the room, visitors are invited to put a sticker onto a poster indicating whether they would visit a local cultural center if it offered opportunities to learn more about Black and brown people in British history. People Dem Collective is raising money to open just such a cultural center on Margate's seafront.

"Art is often a vehicle for social progress," Ms. Barrow Williams said, adding that the Turner exhibit "shows the power of protest."

"We Will Walk" also speaks to broad themes of resistance, but on a different continent. Freeman Vines' carved wooden guitars, made from the wood of a North Carolina tree from which Black people were lynched, are on display, as are a collection of quilts made by Black women in Gee's Bend, an isolated Alabama hamlet and a former plantation where many of the quilters' ancestors were enslaved.

The exhibition also features photos taken by the British artist Hannah Collins of other works by Black artists from the American South. Ms. Collins, who is white, co-curated "We Will Walk" with the British curator and researcher Paul Goodwin, who is Black.

Ms. Collins says she hopes that staging a British exhibition featuring art associated with the U.S. civil rights movement will help Britain reckon with its own racist past.

"There's a shared past in slavery. There's a shared past in oppression," she said in an interview. "If that history isn't put together in any way, it doesn't do anyone any good."

Yet Ms. Walker said she wasn't engaging in an act of protest when she drew the charcoal and chalk portraits that stretch up the walls of the gallery's lobby. "The space I seek to reclaim is that of visibility," she said. "With visibility comes worth, and with worth comes humanity."

The drawings are accompanied by online audio of the sitters discussing their feelings of both belonging and marginalization in Margate, a majority-white town. In depicting real Black women and girls, Ms. Walker said she was looking to redress the dominance of whiteness in both Western art history and mainstream British history.

But the impulse to automatically call works by Black or female artists "political" limits the possible interpretations of a work, Ms. Walker says. For female artists of color like her, this presents dual difficulties.

"I personally feel that much of my career as an artist has been spent resisting the boxes that the art world wants to put me in," she said.

Many artists have contested the tendency of art critics and the public to recognize the work of Black artists principally as tools of protest. Frank Bowling, a Guyana-born artist who has lived in the London district of Pimlico for more than five decades, has said that he moved to New York in the mid-1960s partly because in Britain his identity as a "Caribbean artist" had come with confining expectations.

"It seemed that everyone was expecting me to paint some kind of protest art out of post-colonial discussion," he told The Guardian in 2012.

The genre known as "protest art" became prominent in mainstream discussions about Black British art after the British Black arts movement, which was birthed by a generation of young Black artists in the 1980s who addressed anti-Black racism and Black feminism in their work. This included a group of British Afro-Caribbean art students northwest of London, who formed what became known as the BLK Art Group.

"We were all interested in how you make an art practice that is responsive to political ideas," said Keith Piper, one of its founding members.

But members sparred over how explicitly political their work should be, according to Mr. Piper and Marlene Smith, another member.

"It's important for me to make work that speaks to the times that I live in, but I wouldn't want to describe my work as protest art," Ms. Smith said, adding that it wasn't about "negating something."

Ms. Walker echoed these sentiments.

"I don't make 'protest art,'" she said. "I make art."

For the People Dem Collective, creating art as a form of protest can encourage support for the Black Lives Matter movement and disrupt the hegemonic whiteness that has traditionally dominated both the Turner and the British art world.

"To be able to have protest within that art exhibition - within that institution," Ms. Barrow Williams said, "is huge."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Artists Look Beyond 'Protest Art' at British Shows

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Turner Contemporary Gallery hosts an exhibit exploring the U.S. civil rights movement, as well as two installations from contemporary Black British artists who find inspiration in the local community. MARGATE, England - When the artists Kelly Abbott and Victoria Barrow Williams heard that the Turner Contemporary Gallery was hosting an exhibition focused on art associated with the civil rights movement in the American South, they felt confused.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Films about South Africa once focused on apartheid, but a new generation of directors and producers is making hits about modern life and love for global audiences.

Actors applying makeup on the set of the soap opera "Gomora" during filming in Johannesburg last month. Credit... Joao Silva/The New York Times

JOHANNESBURG - One of South Africa's top film producers squinted at a monitor as a hush settled over the crew. Cameras zoomed in on an actress playing a dealer of fine art - chicly dressed in a pencil skirt made from bold African textiles - who offered a coy smile as an old flame stepped into her gallery.

It's the opening scene of a new Netflix movie about high-powered Black women, wealth and modern city life in Johannesburg - one in a flood of productions from a new generation of South African filmmakers. They are bent on telling their own stories on their own terms, eager to widen the aperture on a country after a generation of films defined by apartheid, poverty and struggle.

"We call it the legacy exhaustion, the apartheid cinema, people are exhausted with it," Bongiwe Selane, the producer, said a few days later in the editing studio. "The generation now didn't live it, they don't really relate to it. They want to see stories about their experiences now."

Those stories have been buoyed by recent investment from streaming services like Netflix and its South Africa-based rival, Showmax, which are racing to attract audiences across the African continent and beyond, and pouring millions into productions by African filmmakers.

Image

Bongiwe Selane, at the Usual Suspects Studios in Johannesburg. She said people wanted to see stories about their current experiences, not just from the apartheid era. Credit... Joao Silva/The New York Times

In South Africa, where for decades the local film industry has been financed by and catered to the country's white minority, the new funding has boosted Black filmmakers - a cultural moment that parallels the one playing out in Hollywood.

Netflix's first script-to-screen South African productions - the spy thriller "Queen Sono" and "Blood and Water," a teen drama about an elite private high school - have won fans locally and topped the streaming giant's international charts.

"I know especially in the States, a lot of people were excited to see a Black, dark-skinned girl play a lead character in Netflix," Ama Qamata, 22, a star of "Blood and Water," said one recent afternoon in Johannesburg on set for a local soap opera.

As a makeup artist touched up her merlot-red lipstick, showrunners shouted into walkie-talkies to set up the day's scene: A woman at a funeral accidentally falls into the grave of the man she is accused of killing. "Over the top, but the audience loves it," one line producer, Janine Wessels, quipped.

Soap operas like this have been a favorite on local television for years, but many were imported from the United States. "Blood and Water" takes another familiar American genre - the teen drama - and turns the tables: It's a story set in Cape Town, featuring mansion parties with bouncers, bartenders and infinity pools soaked in neon lights - and has been eaten up by American audiences.

Often likened to "Gossip Girl," the show was the first original African series to be ranked in Netflix's Top Ten chart in several countries, including the United States, Britain, France and South Africa.

"One of my proudest moments was people from the continent just saying 'Wow, you really represented us in good light, you really showed the world the filmmaking we're capable of,'" Ms. Qamata said.

In the three decades since apartheid, much of South African cinema has been shaped by its legacy.

Hollywood studios have flocked to the country to film blockbusters about Nelson Mandela and the struggle's other heroes. The South African government has promoted apartheid-focused entertainment on local television as part of the country's own efforts to reckon with its history.

Other local fare catered largely to the country's white Afrikaans minority, who could afford cable and outings to movie theaters mostly in malls and wealthy suburbs - a long, expensive trek for many Black South Africans living in the country's old townships.

"We've always had the local industry and funders sort of dictating how our stories should be told," Ms. Selane, the producer, said. "Our financiers say, you can't say that or if you say it that way you will offend our white subscribers."

Productions about apartheid were important in documenting the country's history and exposing the roots of an economy that remains one of the most unequal in the world, where wealth is still concentrated mostly in the hands of whites and a small Black elite.

But in recent years, the country has also undergone major demographic and economic shifts. The first South Africans who grew up after apartheid are now adults, asserting their voices on social media and in professional workplaces. And a growing Black middle class has been eager to see itself reflectedonscreen - and showing it with their wallets.

In 2015, the film "Tell Me Sweet Something," about an aspiring young writer who finds unlikely love in Johannesburg's hipster hangout Maboeng, hit number five in South Africa, blowing the lid off box office expectations for locally made romantic comedies.

A year later, "Happiness is a Four Letter Word" - the prequel to Ms. Selane's latest film that opens with the art gallery scene - outperformed several Hollywood releases in South African movie theaters on its opening weekend.

The movie revolves around three bold women navigating a new South Africa. There are Princess, a serial dater and owner of a trendy art gallery; Zaza, a glamorous housewife having an illicit love affair; and Nandi, a high-powered lawyer who gets cold feet on the cusp of her wedding.

"Audiences would come up to me to tell me how they also had a guy who broke their heart and they want to see that, to watch something where apartheid is not in the foreground," said Renate Stuurman, who plays Princess. "It can be in the background, surely, it's what brought us here, but people were happy to be distracted."

Netflix and Showmax pounced on such stories to capture audiences in Africa, where streaming is projected to reach nearly 13 million subscriptions by 2025 - up fivefold from the end of 2019, according to Digital TV Research, an industry forecaster. For Netflix, the investment ispart of a larger push to acquire a generation of Black content.

"We're aiming to become a strong part of the local ecosystem in terms of growing the capacity and talent in the market," said Ben Amadasun, the director of Africa Originals and Acquisitions at Netflix. "The basis is that we believe that stories can come from anywhere and travel everywhere."

Since 2016, the company has snapped up content from filmmakers in South Africa and Nigeria, home to the industry popularly known as Nollywood. Nigerian filmmakers have churned out thousands of movies - many produced with just a few thousand dollars and one digital camera - since the late 1990s.

Nollywood films won fans across English-speaking Africa, but South Africa is chipping away at its dominance, industry leaders say.

For the past two decades, South Africa has hosted major Hollywood studios drawn to its highly skilled workers and government-issued rebate on all production costs spent in the country.

Cape Town's streets were transformed into Islamabad for the fourth season of Homeland; studios constructed models of Robben Island for "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom;" and crews flew helicopters, crashed cars and set off massive explosions in downtown Johannesburg for "Avengers: Age of Ultron." Of the roughly 400 films made in South Africa between 2008 and 2014, nearly 40 percent were foreign productions, according to the National Film and Video Foundation, a government agency.

For filmmakers here, the shoots were often a source of frustration. The studios brought in their own directors and leading actors - who sometimes played South African characters - while sidelining South Africans to jobs as assistants and line producers.

The productions "weren't looking for our intellect or perspectives, they were looking for Sherpas," said Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, a filmmaker.

But increased investment in South Africa's already thriving film industry means that local creatives like Mr. Qubeka have come closer to realizing their ambitions. His new production, "Blood Psalms," a series for Showmax, employs massive sets reminiscent of "Game of Thrones," green screens to concoct magical powers, and elaborate costumes of armor and golden crowns.

Inside an editing suite in Johannesburg one recent morning, Mr. Qubeka chatted with an editor slicing together shots for the show, about a queen battling a world-ending prophecy - a plot drawn from African mythology.

"The true revolution," Mr. Qubeka said, "is that we as South Africans are being sought out for our perspective and our ideas."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
South African Filmmakers Move Beyond Apartheid Stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Films about South Africa once focused on apartheid, but a new generation of directors and producers is making hits about modern life and love for global audiences. JOHANNESBURG - One of South Africa's top film producers squinted at a monitor as a hush settled over the crew.

# data[].attributes.headline
Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed, Goré Island

# data[].attributes.subject
Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed, Goré Island

# data[].attributes.body
https://twitter.com/ClintSmithIII/status/1399731889309634561?s=20&t=b8bRMWh6qIhiMb6NqCMYHA

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade. https://t.co/PwlKGS3yh0

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
I traveled to New York City to explore how slavery was memorialized in what was once the second largest slave port in the US & whose mayor wanted to secede from the Union. And where I learned things like how the Statue of Liberty was intended to celebrate the abolition of slavery https://t.co/1tLVEZtBPi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade. pic.twitter.com/PwlKGS3yh0
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) June 1, 2021

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade. https://t.co/PwlKGS3yh0

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.tweets[].text
I traveled to New York City to explore how slavery was memorialized in what was once the second largest slave port in the US & whose mayor wanted to secede from the Union. And where I learned things like how the Statue of Liberty was intended to celebrate the abolition of slavery https://t.co/1tLVEZtBPi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade. https://t.co/PwlKGS3yh0

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
I also traveled abroad to Dakar, Senegal in an effort to explore how slavery was taught and remembered in Western Africa. I visited the famous House of Slaves at Gorée Island to explore how a single door in a single home became one of the primary symbols of the slave trade.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
I traveled to New York City to explore how slavery was memorialized in what was once the second largest slave port in the US & whose mayor wanted to secede from the Union. And where I learned things like how the Statue of Liberty was intended to celebrate the abolition of slavery https://t.co/1tLVEZtBPi

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/world/africa/dakar-biennale-senegal-art.html?smid=url-share

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The art world has descended on the Senegalese capital for its first pandemic-era biennale, the biggest art event in West Africa, where the greatest creations on view are often found just by strolling the streets.

A performance in front of the train station in downtown Dakar on Sunday, one of hundreds of events and exhibitions taking place on the sidelines of the Biennale in Senegal's capital.

DAKAR, Senegal - It's FOMO season in Senegal's capital.

Even when you're at an exhibition opening for this year's Dakar Biennale - oohing and aahing over the artwork and envying outfits as you people spot - there's a fear of missing out on an even better scene somewhere else. What's happening - right now! - at the five other openings you could be attending, scattered across this seaside capital?

This is the (pleasant) conundrum faced by those lucky enough to be in Senegal for this year's Biennale, which has become one of the biggest - and definitely the coolest - contemporary art events on the African continent.

The Biennale, which opened last month and runs through June 21, is the zenith of the city's ebullient cultural calendar, drawing in artists, collectors and trendsetters from across the world.

But experiencing art in Dakar is easy, and inspirational, any time of the year. Art and style are embedded in the everyday here, and those shut out of all the Biennale offers because of time or money can easily get their art fix just by taking a walk, in pretty much any direction.

The sandy street outside my apartment is a collage or relief, made new each morning by paw prints, motorcycle skids and stray bougainvillea blooms. A security guard's rickety chair made of pieces of worn-out canoe is a still life. Fruit vendors create installations with mangoes and baggy umbrellas.

You don't need parties to spot beautiful outfits. On any old Friday, spend 10 minutes on any street corner, and you're guaranteed a tableau of people wearing avant-garde sunglasses, pointy slippers or funky heels, and a rainbow of shiny bazin boubous - beaten damask cotton robes.

The art on display at the former Palais de Justice this year is magnificent. But people come as much to wander around the half-ruin of the building itself - its hushed courtrooms, central courtyard and falling ceilings - as to see the curators' picks. Here, coup plotters, would-be assassins and opposition politicians were tried until cracks began appearing in the building's Brutalist concrete walls, raising fears that it would collapse. It was abandoned in the early 1990s.

But it was still standing 24 years later, in 2016, when its doors were finally reopened to become the new home of the Biennale's main exhibition.

The feeling I get meandering its halls is one I often encounter in Dakar. Particularly, it's a feeling that comes when I'm in a spluttering yellow taxi whose radio is playing lulling Sufi chants as it barrels down the Corniche, Dakar's seaside boulevard. On the left, through sun-bleached palm fronds, are miles of pale sea; on the right, the call to prayer is echoing from near and distant mosques.

It's a feeling of sweet nostalgia for a time I'm still living through, in a city I still call home.

That city, though, is changing every day. The clang of construction machinery, the glare of building lights, and the truckloads upon truckloads of cement all ensure the transformation of Dakar, on what sometimes seems like an hourly basis, with groves of flat-roofed apartment buildings suddenly sprouting where groves of palm trees had only recently stood.

So the people really entitled to feel nostalgic about Dakar are those who knew the city with uninterrupted sight lines to the sea, with far less traffic, pollution and property speculation.

The theme of this year's Biennale - Ĩ'Ndaffa in the Serer language, meaning to forge in English - seems apt. Outside the art galleries, Dakar's metalworkers are busy forging a new city out of rebar.

An apartment tower is planned at the entrance to Plateau, the city's downtown where Art Deco and neo-Sudanese architecture mingle; the huge structure will dominate the heart of the city.

A monster of a blocky glass-and-concrete building is going up in a small residential suburb of low villas where two hills, one topped by a lighthouse, and the other by a Soviet-style statue built by North Koreans, give the area its name - Mamelles, which means "breasts."

The changes the city is going through are reflected in the works of the artists who live here. Some of them, like Ousmane Mbaye, a former refrigerator repairman turned upscale furniture designer, work outside in the street, literally watching the city grow around them.

In the rapidly gentrifying area of Ngor, a former street artist, Saadio, is now enjoying commercial success. He showed me his most recent work, canvases that are a joyous riot of scooters and Nescafé and radios and cats and color, all part of the daily Dakar tapestry. He waved an arm at one of his most recent paintings, which depicted a policeman stopping a taxi driver.

"That's traffic and pollution," he said, and it took me a moment to realize that this wasn't just part of the painting, but its title, its whole theme - and the reason he'd painted the blocky buildings in blacks and grays.

The success of the Biennale and the city's broader art scene is part of what's driving the construction and gentrification boom that is creating the new Dakar.

But it's a safe bet that the city won't change beyond recognition. Even covered in gray smudge, Saadio's canvas had many flashes of his, and the city's, trademark color.

And even with all the changes, Dakar's natural tableaux will be hard to expunge completely. We'll have the street hawkers, weaving between Porsches and horse-carts, with their drivers, steering wheels or reins in hand, reflected in the large gold-framed mirrors being sold.

We'll have the silvery sea that is imperceptible from its upstairs neighbor, the sky - especially when the dry, dusty winds of the harmattan season are blowing. Also not going anywhere are the shore's volcanic rocks, like giant pumice stones, that gave the work space of the artist Kehinde Wiley its name: Black Rock Senegal.

And however much development we see, what won't disappear is the paper twisted around black-eyed pea sandwiches - the city's classic breakfast food - sometimes a newspaper decades old, sometimes a child's homework, sometimes a voting ballot.

I'll miss the Biennale party circuit when it moves on. But then I'll be able to again wander around the Palais de Justice by myself, fancy people gone, for a dose of old Dakar, the one we may all eventually be feeling nostalgic for.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
At Dakar's Biennale, the City Itself Is the Most Colorful Canvas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The art world has descended on the Senegalese capital for its first pandemic-era biennale, the biggest art event in West Africa, where the greatest creations on view are often found just by strolling the streets. DAKAR, Senegal - It's FOMO season in Senegal's capital.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Politically, the decade from 1960 to 1970 was a period of deafening silence among black South Africans. The freedom movements of the 1950s had been banned and their leaders imprisoned. In the late 1960s, new young leaders arose, bringing a fresh concept for organizing called "black consciousness." Foremost among these activists was Steve Biko. As a university student, Biko had been involved with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a multiracial civil rights organization. Later, Biko began to rethink the role that racial identity should play in anti-apartheid activism. In 1968, he co-founded the South African Students' Organisation (SASO). This new student organization, unlike NUSAS, was open to the three groups identified as black-native Africans, "coloureds," and Asians-but it was not open to whites. The philosophical core of SASO was black consciousness: an assertive affirmation of black identity. Sympathetic whites were encouraged to form their own organizations to fight apartheid, but Biko and other leaders believed that it was important for black South Africans to take control of their own destinies, rather than relying on white support to bring their freedom. A core idea within the Black Consciousness Movement was the need for blacks to change their mentality and free their minds from the ideas of inferiority that apartheid had long encouraged.

In the selection below, from a speech Biko gave in 1971 at a nationwide multiracial student conference, he articulates his understanding of the connection between white racism and black consciousness. He saw the power that could come from organizing as blacks. Black Consciousness spread widely among youth and was a major spark igniting the 1976 Soweto uprising and leading to a resurgence in the national freedom movement. On June 16, 1976, in the segregated township of Soweto, thousands of black students walked out of their schools and marched defiantly through the streets, demanding an end to their second-class status in education and beyond. Students in other cities responded with similar demonstrations. Across the country, the paramilitary police came out in force, killing hundreds of teenagers and imprisoning thousands. The following year, in 1977, Steve Biko was imprisoned, tortured, and left to die. Yet thousands of others continued this struggle.

White Racism and Black Consciousness
We now come to the group that has longest enjoyed confidence from the black world-the [white] liberal establishment, including radical and leftist groups. The biggest mistake the black world ever made was to assume that whoever opposed apartheid was an ally. . . .

How many white people fighting for their version of a change in South Africa are really motivated by genuine concern and not by guilt? . . .

[A white person] possesses the natural passport to the exclusive pool of white privileges . . . . Yet at the back of his mind is a constant reminder that he is quite comfortable as things stand and therefore should not bother about change. . . .

I am not sneering at the liberals and their involvement. Neither am I suggesting that they are the most to blame for the black man's plight. Rather I am illustrating the fundamental fact that total identification [by white liberals] with an oppressed group [blacks] in a system that forces one group to enjoy privilege and to live on the sweat of another, is impossible. . . .

The liberal must fight on his own and for himself. If they are true liberals they must realise that they themselves are oppressed, and that they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous "they" [blacks] with whom they can hardly claim identification. . . .

. . . [I]n South Africa political power has always rested with white society. Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive but, by some skillful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black but they have also told him how to react to the kick. . . . [H]e is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit. . . .

It may be said that, on the broader political front, blacks in South Africa have not shown any overt signs of new thinking since the banning of their political parties [in 1960] . . .

The call for Black Consciousness is the most positive call to come from any group in the black world for a long time. It is more than just a reactionary rejection of whites by blacks. The quintessence of it is the realisation by the blacks that, in order to feature well in this game of power politics, they have to use the concept of group power and to build a strong foundation for this . . .

The philosophy of Black Consciousness, therefore, expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self. At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realisation by the blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed . . .

Slowly, they have cast aside the "morality argument" which prevented them from going it alone and are now learning that a lot of good can be derived from specific exclusion of whites from black institutions . . .

The growth of awareness among South African blacks has often been ascribed to influence from the American "Negro" movement. Yet it seems to me that this [awareness] is a sequel to the attainment of independence by so many African states within so short a time. . . . Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda's . . . often quoted statement was, "[Malawi] is a black man's country; any white man who does not like it must pack up and go." . . .

Through the work of missionaries and the style of education adopted, the blacks were made to feel that the white man was some kind of god whose word could not be doubted . . .

To add to the white-oriented education received, the whole history of the black people is presented as a long lamentation of repeated defeats. Strangely enough, everybody has come to accept that the history of South Africa starts in 1652 [when the first whites arrived]. . . . We must seek to restore to the black people a sense of the great stress we used to lay on the value of human relationships; to highlight the fact that in the pre-van Riebeeck days [before whites arrived] we had a high regard for people, their property and life in general; to reduce the hold of technology over man and to reduce the materialistic element that is slowly creeping into the African character. In this age and day, one cannot but welcome the evolution of a positive outlook in the black world.

1. In the first two paragraphs of the essay, Biko talks about the chasm between whites and blacks in South Africa. In his view, "the interests of blacks and whites in this country have . . . become . . . mutually exclusive." What does he mean? Do you agree? How might Nelson Mandela have responded to black consciousness?

2. Among the criticisms Biko raises against white liberals is that they operate out of guilt and, consequently, their objection to apartheid is weak. Do you agree? Do you believe that guilt offers only a weak rationale for opposing apartheid? Biko urges whites to rethink who they are in South Africa and to realize that they too are oppressed and should act as a white group to bring freedom to their country. Do you believe white South Africans were oppressed by apartheid? If so, in what way(s)?

3. To clarify his argument about the role of whites in Africa, Biko approvingly quotes the founding president of Malawi, Dr. Banda. What does Banda ask whites to do?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Steve Biko Calls for Black Consciousness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Politically, the decade from 1960 to 1970 was a period of deafening silence among black South Africans. The freedom movements of the 1950s had been banned and their leaders imprisoned. In the late 1960s, new young leaders arose, bringing a fresh concept for organizing called "black consciousness."

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/rise-and-fall-of-apartheid

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life is a photographic exhibition examining the legacy of the apartheid system and how it penetrated even the most mundane aspects of social existence in South Africa, from housing, public amenities, transportation, to education, tourism, religion, and businesses. Complex, vivid, evocative, and dramatic, it includes nearly 500 photographs, films, books, magazines, newspapers, and assorted archival documents and covers more than 60 years of powerful photographic and visual production that form part of the historical record of South Africa. Several photographic strategies, from documentary to reportage, social documentary to the photo essay, were each adopted to examine the effects and after-effects of apartheid's political, social, economic, and cultural legacy. Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Rory Bester, the exhibition proposes a complex understanding of photography and the aesthetic power of the documentary form and honors the exceptional achievement of South African photographers.

Past Tour Venues

Haus der Kunst | Munich, Germany
February 15-May 26, 2013

Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Milano | Milan, Italy
July 8-September 15, 2013

Museum Africa | Johannesburg, South Africa
February 13, 2014-April 30, 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life is a photographic exhibition examining the legacy of the apartheid system and how it ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Bruce Campbell Smith collection contains an array of South African art from the 1920s to the present day, which focuses particularly on the works of the emerging modern black artists of the mid to late 20th Century. As one of the biggest private art collections in the country, Campbell Smith's holdings provide this country's most comprehensive, coherent and valuable database of artists that suffered from systematic neglect during the apartheid era. This website makes this collection available to teachers and pupils and the wider public as an archival resource, and promises to become one of the most valuable tools for the democratisation and re-evaluation of the South African art canon. The digital reproductions of the works on this database are of an exceptionally fine quality and will not only enable students and teachers of South African art history to view high resolution images, but also to obtain information about their historical context as well as biographic information on the artists who produced them.

It is by now well known that the development of a canon of the 'best' South African art during the 20th Century was severely curtailed and delimited by the prevalent discourses of that time. In the colonial era, South African museums and collectors focused largely on European art, scarcely considering South African artists worthy of consideration. As South Africa emerged as an independent nation state in the early 20th Century, political power was vested exclusively in whites - a state of affairs that inevitably determined what would come to be regarded as the nation's best artists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Bruce Campbell Smith collection contains an array of South African art from the 1920s to the present day, which focuses particularly on the works of the emerging modern black artists of the mid to late 20th Century.

# data[].attributes.body
https://africa.si.edu/?s=south+africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Home | That Liberty and Equality Might Yet Reign | Ethiopia-Divine Endurance | Independent Africa Faces Forward | Our Ancestors Lived Free | Legends-Looking Back, Facing Forward | We Are...: Women Warriors | South Africa-A Long Walk to Freedom

South Africa-A Long Walk to Freedom

"When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both . . . We are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

-Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1995

Willie Bester

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."-Steve Biko
Imprisoned himself under apartheid for loitering, the artist Willie Bester memorializes the history of harassment and oppression in South Africa's black settlements. The Notorious Green Car 's mesh window screen recalls police vehicles used to patrol and terrorize black settlements. Bester created this large-scale, bright conceptual work to keep the memory of such oppression alive.

Willem Boshoff

They gave the best years of their lives to the struggle.

Prison Sentences reflects upon the marking and passing of time-here, the jail time served by some of South Africa's most notable apartheid-era political prisoners. Each tablet is inscribed with the days, weeks, months, and years served by Nelson Mandela and seven other political prisoners who were initially sentenced to life imprisonment at the close of the Rivonia Trial held in June 1964.

Of the work, Willem Boshoff has said:
"The word 'sentence' refers to the term a prisoner serves, but it also denotes a grammatical whole with . . . an ending. Naming the work Prison Sentences alluded to the second meaning, the idea that one would expect a sentence to end. I wanted to evoke . . . a meditative quality arising from . . . counting days and passing time, to the point at which you lose yourself completely . . . Black granite is the material of a graveyard [and of] memorials. Each panel is reflective, so you see yourself in it."

Heroes in History: "The Rivonia Eight"

Leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid resistance groups were arrested at a farm in Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg, on July 11, 1963. The ANC had been operating underground since the Sharpeville Massacre (April 1960) of 67 protestors by the police.

Two defendants managed to escape from prison; the remaining eight faced charges accusing them of planning acts of guerilla warfare, of accepting aid from foreign supporters, and of promoting communism, among others.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the trial and began the process of constructing a regime of international sanctions that restricted the South African government on the global stage.

Mandela's final speech from the dock, in which he bravely faced the possibility of a death sentence, would mark the last time the South African people heard from the resistance leader until his release from prison on Feb. 11, 1990.

"During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

-Nelson Mandela, speaking from the dock at the close of the Rivonia Trial
The names and sentences completed by the Rivonia prisoners are inscribed on each tablet:
Nelson Mandela: 11 Jun 1964 - 11 Feb 1990 (9,377 days)
Ahmed Kathrada: 11 Jun 1964 - 15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days)
Walter Sisulu: 11 Jun 1964 - 15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days)
Raymond Mhlaba: 11 Jun 1964 - 15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days)
Elias Motsoaledi: 11 Jun 1964 - 15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days)
Andrew Mlangeni: 11 Jun 1964 - 15 Oct 1989 (9,269 days)
Govan Mbeki: 11 Jun 1964 - 5 Nov 1987 (8,548 days)
Dennis Goldberg: 11 Jun 1964 - June 1985 (± 8,030 days)

Nelson Mandela

He changed it all.
While the stones of Robben Island brutalized his body, Mandela also used them as a site to expand the mind. Mandela was forced to work daily in a limestone quarry, where the searing glare from the white stones eventually damaged his eyesight. On the island, Mandela was almost wholly cut off physically from the outside world. Yet, using texts smuggled in from the mainland, he established "The University," through which the prisoners taught a range of subjects-including art-to each other. Despite his decades of internal exile, the memory of Mandela-the lawyer, the activist organizer of civil disobedience campaigns, the militant leader of the armed struggle, the imprisoned martyr-lived on in South Africans' imaginations. Upon his release, the political platform that those decades of memories provided helped to lift Mandela into the negotiations to establish democracy in South Africa-and, eventually, into the presidency itself. This work, created by Mandela upon a return visit to Robben Island after leaving power in 1999, is a part of a series he created reflecting upon scenes of his homeland and memories of the struggle that transformed it. Lime quarry on Robben Island. The pile of stones was created by Nelson Mandela and other ex-political prisoners upon their return. The cave (on left) is where prisoners were able to speak in private. Unidentified photographer, Nov. 28, 2013

Hero in History: Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla ("Troublemaker") Mandela's "long walk to freedom" took him from prison to the presidency-and his people from division to democracy.

Born to Xhosa-speaking parents in the Thembu royal family, Mandela took it upon himself to study law at university. He and Oliver Tambo established a law firm in Johannesburg in 1952, offering free or low-cost counsel to black South Africans.

Mandela helped organize the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, which advocated for nationwide civil disobedience campaigns aimed to highlight the iniquities of apartheid. His growing profile led to arrests and harassment from the state.

After the Sharpeville Massacre (1960), Mandela was convinced that only armed struggle could end apartheid. He cofounded the ANC's militant wing.

Arrested and tried for treason and sabotage, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1963. While subjected to brutal treatment inside prison walls, Mandela became a global symbol of both oppression and hope for those outside.

Upon his release from prison in 1990, Mandela negotiated with President F.W. de Klerk to organize free and fair elections. He had to strike a balance between keeping dialogue open while maintaining political pressure through the ANC. Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

As South Africa's first black president (1994-99), Mandela worked to assure passage of a new constitution-based on majority rule, but guaranteeing minority rights and freedom of expression.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both . . . We are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

-Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1995

Kay Hassan

Nearly 20 million everyday South Africans shape their country's future.

Kay Hassan used scraps from a billboard located near his studio to create this image of citizens of all colors and creeds anxiously waiting in in April 1994 line to cast their first vote, after the last of the apartheid laws were repealed, to create a democratic national government charged with writing a new constitution. The African National Congress (ANC) won 62 percent of the vote and formed a government of national unity with the Inkhata Freedom Party and the former ruling National Party.

Hassan's use of everyday recycled materials recalls earlier South African's graffiti and poster arts, which afforded artists an inexpensive means for artistic creativity and for protesting the government's oppressive policies during apartheid.

Heroes in History: Citizen Voters

They built the new 'Rainbow Nation'-one ballot at a time, together.

On April 26-29 1994, nearly 20 million everyday South African heroes came together for the first time to shape their country's future.

These were the first South African general elections in which people of all backgrounds were allowed to take part. They were tasked with electing a new National Assembly, which would then write a new constitution for the country.

The African National Congress (ANC) won 62% of the vote, and formed a government of national unity with the Inkhata Freedom Party and the formerly ruling National Party.

The new National Assembly elected Nelson Mandela president. April 27 is a public holiday in South Africa-Freedom Day.

"All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realizing you've got to take the gloves off and get out, and reinvent yourself."

-Athol Fugard, South African playwright

Sue Williamson

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another may be the most challenging heroic power. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered a radically new approach to human rights violations, promoting restorative justice in the form of reconciliation over retribution. To achieve the amnesty offered to those who confessed their crimes and sought forgiveness, however, the TRC first had to unearth some truly chilling evils. This assemblage refers to two cases brought before the TRC. Using images taken from newspapers, Williamson intended the prints to appear "as they might perhaps be displayed in a courtroom for the information of the jury." Eugene de Kock, a police commander known as "Prime Evil," was reputed to be the apartheid state's most efficient killer, responsible for the death of numerous activists. De Kock asked to testify before the TRC in the hope that he would be pardoned, but spoke instead without remorse. Images of a pig's head in the second line symbolize the victim of a bombing for which de Kock was responsible. In an experiment, a bomb placed in a cassette recorder blew up a pig's head; a similar bomb killed human rights lawyer Bheki Mlangeni. De Kock was convicted on 89 charges and sentenced to 212 years in prison. Poison Victim tells the story of activist Sipho Mtimkulu, who was arrested for distributing pamphlets. Fed rat poison while in jail, he was hospitalized after his release and recovered. The second line of images shows a jubilant Mtimkulu going home to a hero's welcome-only to disappear soon thereafter, and never be seen again.

South African artist Paul Emmanuel's "Transitions," an installation of five drawings and the critically acclaimed film 3SAI: A Rite of Passage, will open at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art May 12 and continue through Aug. 22. The exhibition, which debuted in 2008 at The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, addresses issues of identity, particularly those of a young white male living in post-apartheid South Africa. This is the first North American stop for the exhibition and video presentation. Both were very well received throughout South Africa, and the film has been featured in international film festivals where it garnered high praise.

The artist and project manager Les Cohn of Art Source South Africa will discuss "Transitions" Saturday, May 15, at 1 p.m. in the gallery. The program is free and open to the public.

"This provocative exhibition by Paul Emmanuel continues the tradition at the National Museum of African Art of showcasing the work of South African artists and attests to that country's prominence as a dynamic center of outstanding contemporary art," said Christine Mullen Kreamer, deputy director and chief curator. "In addition, the exhibition puts a spotlight on the wonderful art of drawing."

"Transitions" comprises a series of five ostensibly "photographic" works which, when examined closely, reveal sensitively hand-drawn, photo-realist images on photographic paper. The works contemplate manhood and the transitions an individual goes through in society.

The adjacent video installation explores the liminal moments of transition, when a young man is either voluntarily or forced to let go of one identity and take on a new identity as property of the state. The 14-minute film documents the head shaving of new recruits at the Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley, one of two South African military training camps that still perform the obligatory hair shaving of army recruits joining the South African National Defence Force.

For the artist, such observed moments raise questions about what one actually witnesses in such rites of passage and how these and similar "rituals" help to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history. Why is one so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility?

A graduate of South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand in 1993, Emmanuel was the first recipient of the prestigious Ampersand Fellowship, which recognizes emerging South African artists and supports a residency in New York. He was born in Zambia and lives and works in Johannesburg.

Of "Transitions," the artist has said, "The production of this body of work is a love affair with concept and surface."

Organizer and Sponsors

The exhibition was organized by Les Cohn of Art Source South Africa. Kreamer is the coordinating curator at the National Museum of African Art.

About the National Museum of African Art

The National Museum of African Art is America's premier museum dedicated to the collection, conservation, study and exhibition of traditional and contemporary African art. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., except Dec. 25. Admission is free. The museum is located at 950 Independence Avenue S.W., near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information about this exhibition, call (202) 633-4600 or visit the museum's website at africa.si.edu. For general Smithsonian information, call (202) 633-1000 or TTY (202) 633-5285.

Ngaire Blankenberg has been named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, effective July 6. A consultant for museums and cultural destinations around the world, Blankenberg brings rich experience finding innovative ways to connect cultural resources to new audiences and a deep commitment to co-reimagining the museums of the future.

Blankenberg, a member of the African diaspora, has a proven track record in the systemic transformation of museums and cultural spaces to become more inclusive and more engaged in the community and society around them.
"The National Museum of African Art embodies the Smithsonian's mission to foster understanding, inspire dialogue and bring people together irrespective of language, culture or border," said Lonnie Bunch, the Secretary of the Smithsonian. "Ngaire's leadership and experience will be invaluable in using the museum's unparalleled collections and scholarship of African Art to further our reach, diversify our audiences and have a more profound impact on the nation and world."

"Museums are institutions that carry a lot of systemic baggage from their colonial origins, but they are vital public spaces to reconsider how we connect and contend with one another and the planet, and where we can redefine, heal and reconcile," Blankenberg said. "The National Museum of African Art sits physically in a city with one of the biggest populations of African peoples in the U.S. Digitally it reaches far into the diaspora. I am so grateful for the trust being placed in me to continue to care for, build, interpret and share NMAfA's fantastic collection, particularly in this new era of U.S.-African relations."

As a consultant, Blankenberg has advised clients on strategies for decolonization, concept development, operations and business planning, programming, stakeholder and public engagement and more. Her recent consulting clients include the National Gallery of Canada, Superblue, Museum and Archive of the Constitution at the Hill (Johannesburg), the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, MEG-Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, Olympique de Marseille football club and other global and local institutions.

In 2017, Blankenberg served as the head of content and strategy for Kossmanndejong, an Amsterdam-based design agency where she helped museum clients shape their interpretive approach to exhibitions, strategic planning, new business development and content development. Previously, she spent eight years (2008-2016) at Lord Cultural Resources as a principal consultant. From 2015 to 2016, she served as the director of Lord Cultural Resources in Europe.

In addition to her extensive work consulting for museums and cultural heritage sites, Blankenberg is a TV and documentary producer, public speaker and a published author.

Blankenberg holds a Master of Arts in media and cultural studies from the University of Natal, in Durban, South Africa, and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
She succeeds Augustus Casely-Hayford, who was director of the museum until March 2020. Deborah Mack from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture has served as the interim director of the museum.

About the National Museum of African Art

The National Museum of African Art is the only museum in the United States dedicated to the collection, conservation, study and exhibition of Africa's arts across time period, geography and medium. Founded as a small museum on Capitol Hill in 1964, it became part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1979 and in 1987 moved to its current location on the National Mall.

The museum has 48 staff members and its fiscal year 2022 budget is $10 million. The museum's collection of 12,000 artworks represents the diversity of the African continent and includes a variety of media-from jewelry to painting, photography, pottery, sculpture, textile and video and sound art-dating from ancient to present times.
The museum has been closed to the public since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will reopen Friday, July 16.

About the Search Committee

A search committee was established in summer 2020 and was assisted by the executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates. The committee was chaired by Kevin Gover, the Smithsonian's Under Secretary for Museums and Culture. Committee members were Melanie Adams, director of the Anacostia Community Museum; Melissa Chiu, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Deborah Mack, interim director of the National Museum of African Art; Karen Milbourne, curator, National Museum of African Art; Veronica Shaw, administrative officer, National Museum of African Art; Suzanne Blier, Harvard University; Salah Hassan, Cornell University; Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art; and Eric Barkley, Magdalene Johnson Obaji and Anne Howard-Tristani, all members of the National Museum of African Art's advisory board.

Media Only
Linda St. Thomas
(202) 633-5188
stthomasl@si.edu
Alexandria Fairchild
(202) 633-0282
fairchilda@si.edu

Learn about Freedom and Liberation with Africa's Freedom Fighters

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. From its Galveston, Texas, origin in 1865-approximately two and one-half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation-the observance of June 19 as African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. Today, Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some locales a month marked with remembrances, celebrations, guest speakers, picnics, and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection, rejoicing, assessment, self-improvement, and for planning the future. From rural communities to metropolitan cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities, and religions are learning about and acknowledging a period in U.S. history that shaped and continues to influence our society today.
(source: https://juneteenth.com)

Slavery, Struggle, Freedom and Independence-Voices of the African Diaspora

Juneteenth focuses on emancipation, liberation, and freedom while remembering the African American struggle for freedom and independence. Its observance symbolizes recognition of a shared historical narrative and experience. The National Museum of African Art's current exhibition Heroes: Principles of African Greatness presents a trajectory of African struggles and triumphs while telling stories that are worthy of celebrating. Heroes reflects on the inherent heroism in struggle and the even more heroic action required in achieving perseverance and survival. From "A Long Walk to Freedom" to "Liberty and Equality," read about our African heroes and celebrate the legacy of Juneteenth Day!

Be your best. This is the quest that the greatest of heroes model for us. Through their journeys, struggles, and triumphs, exceptional individuals exemplify values that we celebrate in tales of heroic accomplishment.

Through art, artists tell such stories-stories of the world's current complexity, but also visions of a world that could yet be. Heroes: Principles of African Greatness features artworks from the National Museum of African Art's permanent collection that tell the story of key heroic principles and personages in Africa's arts and history. Throughout, core values are considered as each artwork is paired with a specific historic African individual who embodies the value expressed in the selected work.

Discover Africa's heroes-some well-known, others perhaps surprising-and see artworks in new ways.
#AfricanHeroes
South Africa-A Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla ("Troublemaker") Mandela's "long walk to freedom" took him from prison to the presidency-and his people from division to democracy.

Born to Xhosa-speaking parents in the Thembu royal family, Mandela took it upon himself to study law at university. He and Oliver Tambo established a law firm in Johannesburg in 1952, offering free or low-cost counsel to black South Africans.

Mandela helped organize the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, which advocated for nationwide civil disobedience campaigns aimed to highlight the iniquities of apartheid. His growing profile led to arrests and harassment from the state.

After the Sharpeville Massacre (1960), Mandela was convinced that only armed struggle could end apartheid. He cofounded the ANC's militant wing.

Arrested and tried for treason and sabotage, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison in 1963. While subjected to brutal treatment inside prison walls, Mandela became a global symbol of both oppression and hope for those outside.

Upon his release from prison in 1990, Mandela negotiated with President F.W. de Klerk to organize free and fair elections. He had to strike a balance between keeping dialogue open while maintaining political pressure through the ANC. Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

As South Africa's first black president (1994-99), Mandela worked to assure passage of a new constitution-based on majority rule, but guaranteeing minority rights and freedom of expression.

Desmond Tutu
A "rabble-rouser for peace," Tutu remains a global moral authority as a truth-teller.

Ordained an Anglican priest in 1961, Tutu rose through the church hierarchy to become general secretary of the South African Council of Churches-a position in which he gained global prominence as an advocate for non-violent resistance to apartheid.

Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Tutu was elected archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, making him the highest Anglican authority in the country. Not known for holding back his opinions, Tutu earned a reputation for his incisive, wry, and often humorous insights. He also promoted the vision of a democratic South Africa as the "Rainbow Nation."

President Nelson Mandela asked Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996-1998. Promoting a vision of restorative justice and determined to hear from the "little people" whose suffering had been ignored, Tutu was sometimes openly overwhelmed with the emotion of the painful testimony. The Commission took over 22,000 statements.

Approaching retirement, archbishop Tutu was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

That Liberty and Equality Might Yet Reign

Ignatius Sancho
Writer. Actor. Composer. Businessman. Abolitionist. He was 18th century Britain's symbol black possibility.

Brought to England in childhood, Sancho learned to read; he devoured books.

Sancho set up a shop in Westminster with his wife, which allowed him the right to vote in parliamentary elections; he was the first black man to vote in Britain.

His letters, published posthumously, were one of the earliest accounts of slavery in English, and became a rallying point in the growing abolitionist movement.

Toussaint Louverture
He was the original black liberation leader.

From a plantation birth to an early life as a wealthy free man, he achieved a wide-ranging education. He took the surname Louverture, from the French term for "opening."

Louverture led a slave rebellion from 1791, switching sides and defeating the armies of three world powers: Spain, the United Kingdom, and France.

Ruling a St. Dominigue freed from French rule, Louverture then codified the abolition of slavery in the new nation, soon to be renamed Haiti.

Huda Sha'arawi
She unveiled the power of Egyptian women.

Sha'arawi was an Egyptian feminist leader. She founded the Egyptian Feminist Union (1923).

An anti-colonial activist, Sha'arawi organized Egypt's largest women-led anti-British demonstration (1919), a milestone in the events leading to Egypt's independence in 1922.

Sha'arawi refused to wear the hijab in public after 1922.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home | That Liberty and Equality Might Yet Reign | Ethiopia-Divine Endurance | Independent Africa Faces Forward | Our Ancestors Lived Free | Legends-Looking Back, Facing Forward | We Are...: Women Warriors | South Africa-A Long Walk to Freedom "When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both .

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dfq3C8GNrE&ab_channel=InZyncPoetries

# data[].attributes.headline
Koleka Putuma "Voices from within--poems for her"

# data[].attributes.subject
Koleka Putuma "Voices from within--poems for her"

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5LRPY_lmmw&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Voices from within -- poems for her | Koleka Putuma | TEDxCapeTownSalon

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2beMMv5anw&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Let's redistribute the land | Ruth Hall | TEDxCapeTownSalon

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.contemporary-african-art.com/south-african-art.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is a vast subject whose origins lie in the ancient form of rock art but because of its history of colonization and subsequent devising of societies from 1910 to 1994, (resulting in immense socio-political upheaval), it has more divergent and widely contrasting forms of art than any other country in Africa. And it is just because of this fact that there are large areas missing in the recordings of modern South African art and this of course alludes primarily to the work of indigenous black artists.

Early history of South African Art

The end of the 19th Century saw continued European settlement in the country and in 1871 the first South African art society was formed; the S.A. Fine Arts Association, followed in 1902 by the South African Society of Artists, a member of whom was Pieter Wenning (1873-1921).

The first South African Art Gallery was established in 1895 in Cape Town with well over 100 bequeathed works in the Collection being declared the property of the Cape Colonial Government in 1986. These paintings and sculptures largely featured English and European artists including Masters. This highly valued collection can be viewed today as part of the national treasure to be conserved and safeguarded in perpetuity.

Towards the end of the 19th C artists such as Hugo Naude, Frans Oerder, Jan Volschenk and the sculptor Anton Van Wouw started to establish a locally embedded art that engaged with life in South Africa. By 1902 the primacy of South African art subject matter was seen as the way of fostering a sense of national identity.

1910 saw the end of the colonial era with the establishment of the Union of SA.

In the Transvaal, the Johannesburg Art Gallery was formed in the University of Witwatersrand and a new building designed and opened to the public in 1915. By 1926, Long Street in Cape Town was a thriving road of artists including Naude and Gwelo Goodman and South African Art was well established. At this time it is very difficult to ascertain whether the European artists had any contact with indigenous artists. Their craft was almost certainly being admired and collected for curiosity but not pursued for collaboration or amalgamation by fellow artists as another current art form.

However there are a few exceptions where artistic talent was recognized and nurtured even if it was a black artist adopting Western style.

Tladi was the first black artist to be formally exhibited in South Africa, two oils and six drawings under the title 'Special Exhibit by Native Artist' at the Selbourne hall, Johannesburg in 1938. His inspiration came from the garden where he worked.

Today the Johannesburg Art Gallery has 3 of his paintings in their permanent collection.
In the 1920's craft was essentially rural and traditional, as in utility driven. But by the 1930's with the introduction of taxes on chiefdoms, black people were driven into labour and it became necessary for craftspeople to make a living from their craft. Certain magisterial authorities recognized the need to nurture talent and to produce quality items of craft that went beyond their usefulness. Two distinct outlets for crafted items now occurred; community based for functional objects and a white market for curios.

In Zululand and Natal, certain individuals crafted works that are to be found in Museums today and appreciated for their originality and skill such as Samuel Makoanyane, the Qwabe brothers and Hezekiel Ntuli.

The Gwabe brothers carved wooden relief panels that are not only important in their own right but also because they undeniably influenced what was to follow at Rorke's Drift with their relief printing. Ntuli who started his artistic life sculpting clay oxen moved on to portrait busts and leopards with great commercial success.

There was a continued desire by patrons of South African art and authorities of influence to keep black artist's work tribal and thereby 'authentic'. What would we have seen develop if they had been allowed to absorb the new techniques, methods and styles they were exposed to and at the same time self express?

Gerard Benghu, 1910-1990. Benghu grew up in a mission school and in 1926 to 1931, the Dept of Education provided him with a studio where he painted beautifully rendered realistic portraits of rural Bhaca life and culture.

What he loved to do was paint landscapes such as this one of his local area, Southern Kwazulu-Natal but he was discouraged by his mentors to rather concentrate on capturing the romanticized visions of a lost paradise that Westerners seemed to require.

In his later years he lived in Cato manor shackland near Durban, painting in sepia and wash as he couldn't afford colour. He did however receive commissions to paint friezes for public institutions and churches and they had a huge impact on those who viewed them, so unused were they to seeing black artists work depicting rural scenes in a contemporary way.

George Pemba, 1912-2001 Pemba was one of the 'Thirties Generation' of pioneer black artists. His work spans 7 decades of South Africa's troubled history and his life story reflective of the divided society in which he was forced to exist. But today he is recognized for his contribution to South African art and his work is acclaimed and sought after.

His work shows great integrity and a passion for painting his Bantu surroundings both rural and township. He was also a playwright, an illustrator of books and an activist.

He won his first prize in 1937 and by 1940 was producing regularly and successfully for the exhibitions of the Eastern Province's Society of Arts and Crafts. In the 1940's he was producing exceptional watercolours but later turned to oils under the suggestion of Gerald Sekoto who felt that South African's preferred solid paint and effectual colour.

After a tour of South Africa where he painted Basotho homelands he wrote in his diary...

"I felt inspired by the spirit of my past and my strength grew with the task I had in front of me: To capture the essence of native South Africa."

At the Durban International Club exhibition of black artists he sold every piece of work.

But by 1965 he was being marginalized not only for the colour of his skin but for his lack of formal training which meant he was shunned in the face of the art elite and the dogmas of their 'Moderism'. Fortunately he received financial support from a UK anti-apartheid fund that allowed him to carry on painting for over 20 years. South African art rediscovered him in 1989 thanks to Steven Sacks and his work appeared in the exhibition 'The Neglected Tradition'.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's he turned to portraying the depiction of overtly political themes that reflected the turmoil of the dying days of apartheid.

John Koenakeefe Mohl, 1903-1985 Koenakeefe Mohl is noted for two things besides the quality of his art to be appreciated for its own worth: He created the first school for black artists in Sophiatown, Johannesburg and he also refused to paint subject matter that others felt he should be painting.

He loved to paint delicate atmospheric landscapes and stated 'But I am an African and when God made Africa, he also created beautiful landscapes for Africans to admire and paint.' This firm resolve was possibly formulated in his early adult years when he went to art school in Namibia and then to Germany for 5 years perhaps escaping the dominance of the governing bodies he was forced to live under.

After the demise of Sophiatown he moved to Soweto where he shunned the formal approach to exhibiting and chose to show his work either at the monthly 'Artists under the Sun', in Joubert Park, Johannesburg or out of his home in Moroka township. He continued to paint, much like his peers, township scenes of the newly urbanized black populace residing on the edge of the 'white' cities. He worked mainly in oils, often in monochromatic hues to capture the essence of the morning mists, rays of sunshine through clouds as labourers toiled, rainy scenes with people wending their way home after a day on the mines; these are the kind of themes that are captured in his gently rendered paintings.

Gladys Mgudlandlu, 1925-1979 Mgudlandlu was a self taught artist, born in the Cape and the first black woman artist to exhibit in public and have her work displayed in a Gallery (1960). She had an uninhibited use of colour and unusual perspective and was proficient in most mediums from pen, charcoal and wash, to gouache and eventually oils. In 1979, her work was selected to appear in two notable exhibitions; Contemporary African Art in South Africa and The Neglected Tradition.

South African Modernists Art Workshops Resistance Art South African Rural Sculpture Johans Borman Fine Art
Simon Lekgetho, 1929-1985 Lekgetho is an artist who is being slowly recognized for his contribution to South African art. Under some guidance from Walter Batiss he painted landscapes, portraits and still lifes in traditional manner but his subject matter was quintessentially African featuring calabashes, bones, gourds, beads, shells, grinding stones; he was very concerned with making marks that reflected his culture. His portraits were quite other-worldly with haunting qualities and a strange, quiet mystery about them. As an artist he had his own studio by the 1950's and he also taught art to his own community.

Links for further SA art pages:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It is a vast subject whose origins lie in the ancient form of rock art but because of its history of colonization and subsequent devising of societies from 1910 to 1994, (resulting in immense socio-political upheaval), it has more divergent and widely contrasting forms of art than any other country in Africa.

# data[].attributes.headline
Thebe Kgositsile aka Earl Sweatshirt's "Nowhere, Nobody"  

# data[].attributes.subject
Thebe Kgositsile aka Earl Sweatshirt's "Nowhere, Nobody"  

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.okayafrica.com/earl-sweatshirt-nowhere-nobody-bra-willie/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At the beginning of this month a year ago, Thebe Kgositsile, better known as Earl Sweatshirt, lost his father, South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile. Still, at this time, his fans around the globe were becoming increasingly anxious for new music.

What followed ten months later was Some Rap Songs. Now, the internet's favourite rapper is augmenting his third album with a short film called Nowhere, Nobody.

The eight-minute film is written and directed by Random Acts of Flyness directors, Terence Nance and Naima Ramos-Chapman. Although it's based on music from Some Rap Songs, it's more of an art film than an extended music video. Nowhere, Nobody reflects the non sequitur skittishness of the album from which it borrows its music.

In all this, the central theme of idols and idolising remains consistent.

There's no question that Keorapetse Kgositsile's legacy is something that follows Earl Sweatshirt wherever he goes. As a staunch anti-apartheid activist, Kgositsile-or Bra Willie as he was affectionately known-made a name for himself through his work during exile in the US, bridging the gap between South African and African-American poetry. In 1996, he was inaugurated as South Africa's first National Poet Laureate and, in 2008, was honoured with the National Order of Ikhamanga for his contribution to the field of literature.

All of this matters, especially when your proximity to an icon is that of a son. But what can you actually do with any of this? In multiple scenes, the rapper can be seen attempting to engage with statues. In some cases, he even uses hands from a statue to try and connect, even with a human being painted as a statue, and sometimes as a woman (vocalist, LaDiamond Blu e plays his female version).

Around the time Sweatshirt lost his father, he revealed to Rolling Stone that their relationship was a "non-perfect one" and that "talking to him is symbolic and non-symbolic, but it's literally closure for my childhood. Not getting to have that moment left me to figure out a lot with my damn self."

The quiet tension embedded in the quest for tangibility is how the film tries to depict this. You can only idolise so far until you can't anymore-until it's meant all it possibly can and you have to go and live your own life. But having said that, Bra Willie (as Kgositsile was affectionately known) will never die since he lives on through his legacy. The film's most striking image captures a casket filled with statue hands. It is only half open and the other half draped in the South African flag.

Among all this, additional themes of black fatherhood and the relationship black men have with black women are also explored which makes this film of less than 10 minutes just as jam-packed as the 15-song, 24-minute Some Rap Songs. Ultimately, it's the world's most ambitious promo spot for an album tour which Earl Sweatshirt is embarking on beginning March this year. So if you do nothing else today, clear ten minutes of your time to watch Nowhere, Nobody.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Earl Sweatshirt's 'Nowhere, Nobody' Short Film Tries to Figure Out His Legendary Father's Legacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the beginning of this month a year ago, Thebe Kgositsile, better known as Earl Sweatshirt, lost his father, South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile. Still, at this time, his fans around the globe were becoming increasingly anxious for new music. What followed ten months later was Some Rap Songs.

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/4f8OAtKgNfo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Normally, I am reluctant to slam another person's comments about a film, but I have to take issue with Noel-74. First of all, the arrogance of comments like, "You've got to be a complete idiot to believe you're seeing something new" takes me back to the self-important little twerps of my undergraduate days. So, Noel-74, if you are an undergraduate, my apologies. Let's hope it's just a stage you're working through. If you're over the of 25, please stay clear. I mean, seriously, your comment that there was something sinister in making abject poverty look so beautiful. Can any person look at the scenes depicted in that movie and feel anything other than horror at the conditions in which so many of our brothers and sisters live? Not to get all touchy-feely on you, but if you came away from that movie thinking about how beautiful it all looked, I'd say it was you, and not the movie, that could use a little more introspection. I liked this movie a lot. I thought it was moving, chilling, depressing and unpredictable. Even the ending (NO SPOILERS HERE) could have gone a bunch of different ways, several of which would have been more conventional than what we are left with. A very good film, with excellent acting.

Contribute to this page

Suggest an edit or add missing content

By what name was Tsotsi (2005) officially released in India in English?

Answer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Normally, I am reluctant to slam another person's comments about a film, but I have to take issue with Noel-74. First of all, the arrogance of comments like, "You've got to be a complete idiot to believe you're seeing something new" takes me back to the self-important little twerps of my undergraduate days.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The role of South African dance music during apartheid | Resident Advisor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Real Scenes: Johannesburg | Resident Advisor

# data[].attributes.body
This will help see some of the places of interest in South Africa, mentioned and alluded to in Sepamla's work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try Earth anyway by choosing an option below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster | The Art Institute of Chicago

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first-ever exhibition in North America dedicated to the graphic work of the Medu Art Ensemble-an artist collective developed in opposition to South African apartheid-showcases the group's oppositional creativity in both word and image.

# data[].attributes.body
"How might music help to shape our identities so as to construct new sorts of human connectedness?"

Descriptions and links to audio for a curated selection of 16 tracks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love South African Jazz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers.

# data[].attributes.headline
South African Visual Artist Zanele Muholi

# data[].attributes.subject
South African Visual Artist Zanele Muholi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An Artist Documenting the Beauty of Queer Black South Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zanele Muholi discusses visual activism, gospel music and walking more than 15,000 steps in a day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Journey on the Blue Train: Gilded Luxury in the World’s ‘Most Unequal Country’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On a trip from Cape Town to Pretoria, a reporter grapples with the whiplash of traveling through South Africa’s two worlds, from majestic mountains to struggling shantytowns.