Aperture | Two South African Artists Reflect on the Memories of Apartheid
In a dual exhibition, Lebohang Kganye and Sue Williamson consider trauma, healing, and the potential for transformation.
On May 10, 1994, South Africans inaugurated Nelson Mandela as their first Black president, bringing to an end the country’s notorious system of apartheid. Nearly thirty years later, crucial questions remain about ensuring equal rights for all South Africans. How might these citizens account for the trauma of violent racial segregation? How can they reconcile personal memories with official state accounts? And what role can artists play in creating new avenues for those personal and national narratives?
The exhibition Tell Me What You Remember, curated by Emma Lewis and currently on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, thoughtfully addresses these questions as they surface in the work of South African artists Sue Williamson, who was born in 1941 and grew up under apartheid, and Lebohang Kganye, who was born in 1990, the year that then president F. W. de Klerk unbanned the African National Congress, setting in motion apartheid’s dismantling. Importantly, the landmark 1994 general elections created a generational divide between those who directly experienced the horrors of apartheid and those who have grown up in its aftermath (often referred to as “born frees”). Bringing together an artist from each side of this divide, the exhibition highlights how each thinks about memory in relation to both trauma and healing, as well as the subtle differences in their approaches.
Entering the gallery, visitors are greeted by images of women who lived through apartheid. Williamson’s contributions include multiracial portraits from her series All Our Mothers (1983–ongoing), which documents—with real emotional force—everyday people who fought against that system. The entryway to the exhibition also includes Kganye’s larger-than-life portraits of matrilineal ancestors from her series Mosebetsi wa Dirithi (2022), which the artist has beautifully rendered in carefully quilted swatches of fabric. This first moment of Tell Me What You Remember is the only one where Kganye’s and Williamson’s work is directly in dialogue; the rest of the exhibition is divided evenly between the two artists.