A milestone of its kind and the result of over six years of research, the project brings together the work of nearly 70 photographers, artists and filmmakers, demonstrating the power of the image – from photographic essays to reportage, from social analysis to photojournalism and art – to record and analyze the legacy of apartheid and its effects on daily life in South Africa.
Complex, intense, evocative and dramatic, the exhibition analyzes over 60 years of illustrated and photographic production now part of the historical memory and of the modern South African identity. Photographs, works of art, films, videos, documents, posters and periodicalsi: a rich mosaic of materials, many of which are rarely exhibited together, documents one of the most important historical periods of the twentieth century, its still lasting consequences on South African society and the importance of the role of Nelson Mandela.
In addition to the work of members of Drum Magazine in the 50s, the Afrapix Collective in the 80s and reports from the so-called Bang Bang Club, there will also be outstanding works by pioneering South African photographers such as Leon Levson, Eli Weinberg, David Goldblatt , Peter Magubane, Alf Khumalo, Jurgen Schadeberg, Sam Nzima, Ernest Cole, George Hallet, Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel, Paul Weinberg, Kevin Carter, Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich. Also on display are the works of a new generation of South African photographers, including Sabelo Mlangeni and Thabiso Sekgale, who explore the consequences that apartheid still produces in the country today.
Together with them also contemporary artists such as Adrian Piper, Sue Williamson, Jo Ractliffe, Jane Alexander, Santu Mofokeng, Guy Tillim, Hans Haacke and a video that collects 10 animations by William Kentridge for a total of almost an hour of projection.
The exhibition is curated by Okwui Enwezor.
As usual, the PAC is planning educational activities, conceived and organized by MARTE and created with the contribution of the COOP Lombardia Group, to bring adults and children closer to the works on display.
RISE AND FALL OF APARTHEID: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life was made with contributions from Mark McCain and Caro Macdonald/Eye and I, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Deborah Jerome and Peter Guggenheimer, of the New York City Department Cultural along with the City Council and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in honor of 30 years of dedicated service to the ICP by Willis E. Hartshorn.
