The Trilogy first episode took place in Johannesburg (SA) in 2013 and was followed by the Braamopoly exhibition at Room Gallery. Its collaborators were the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Maria Fidel Regueros owner of Room Gallery, Steffen Fischer, Shelley Barradas and Dwayne Innocent Kapula.
The exhibition was hosted by Room Gallery, an independent initiative, committed to showcase multidisciplinary works in the visual arts in June 2013. At the time, Room Gallery was located in the creative epicenter of the study: 70 Juta Street, Braamfontein.
A game, ‘Braamopoly’, was one of the display components assembled in the gallery, along with a series of hand-made maps, old and contemporary photographs of streets and buildings of the neighborhood. A slide show projected on the gallery shop front which was visible externally overnight.
As a result of a research in the photographic archives of the Museum Africa in Johannesburg, five photos taken between 1957 and 1964 were chosen and compared with my photos of the same places photographed in 2013.
24 maps were produced by people invited for the mapping exercise over a period of 3 months in 2012 and some of them were displaced in the gallery.
Together with the gallery exhibition, an external intervention was carried out by placing 32 posters in different shop windows, bars and restaurants of the neighbourhood. These posters included quotes from selected interviews, carried out by the author, with residents, users or workers from the neighbourhood.
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A stencil was designed to be imprinted around the perimeter of implementation of the private company, Urban Genesis, that manages the area (Braamfontein Management District – BMD) with the intention of raising the question about the ownership of public spaces in the neighborhood. The proposed implementation was banned by Urban Genesis through an e-mail which was exhibited in the gallery next to the map of the BMD district area.
Visits and activities with young people were also organised during the exhibition.
Serie Debates Controle Creativo
Room Gallery, Creative Control Round Table, 2016;
Room Gallery, The Carpet Series, 2013.
Participations
Photographic exhibition which explores specific areas in both cities in terms of the notion of Cultural Time Zones (CTZs). To this end, the exhibition examines two adjacent areas in each city, one ‘gentrified’ and one ‘ungentrified’ – Maboneng and Jeppestown in Jo’burg’s CBD; and Select Citywalk Mall and Khirkee Village in South Delhi. Johannesburg, June 2017.
A selection of the images that formed part of the seminar’s companion art exhibition.