District Six:  Museum Case # 9, Nile Street, 1993 and 2023

Sue Williamson
District Six:  Museum Case # 9, Nile Street, 1993 and 2023 , 2023
Found objects in casting and polyurethane resin in wood and perspex case.
Work: 42.9 x 103 x 12 cm

District Six, in Cape Town, was once one of the liveliest parts of the city, a close knit mixed race community with schools, social clubs, a fish market, sporting teams, beauty pageants and a tradition of jazz. In the mid 1960s, the apartheid government announced that under the Group Areas Act, District Six would be demolished and in future would be for Whites only. Years passed. People thought it would never happen, but slowly street by street, District Six was demolished and 60 000 people were moved out of their homes to the bleak areas on the outskirts of the city. In 1981, as an artist and as a member of the Friends of District Six, Sue Williamson spent weeks gathering materials from the demolition sites and recording voices from District Six residents, those who remained, and also those who had left. It was part of an artistic strategy to raise consciousness and try to save the remaining houses from being demolished. The rubble was placed in the middle of the Gowlett Gallery in Cape Town, surrounded by six chairs draped in white. The tape played, and photos on the wall documented the artist's process. The exhibition received major press publicity, and visitors included the security police. The exhibition was titled The Last Supper. Twelve days after the opening the exhibition ended and the doors, windows, baths, bricks, books, and chunks of plaster were returned to the demolition sites. Within a year, District Six existed no more. By 1993, grass had grown over the demolition sites, but under the grass, fragments of houses and belongings remained, the evidence of a community which had now left. On a new search, the artist gathered more materials and broken domestic objects and encased these fragments into small resin blocks. The fragments were left as they had been picked up, so the soil that adhered to them remained, and sometimes building materials leaked residue into the resin. The blocks were displayed in 'Museum Cases,' each named after a street in District Six. In 2023, the last set of the blocks received a new layer of polyurethane resin, preserving them from chipping, and capturing for ever the fragments of china, mirrors, shower curtains, kitchen linoleum which were once part of the daily life of District Six.