Sue Williamson / Other Voices, Other Cities

  • Exhibition116dsc0873-1024_cropped
    Exhibition116dsc0883-1024_cropped
  • Exhibition116dsc0895-1024_cropped
    Exhibition116dsc0909-1024_cropped
  • Exhibition116dsc0909-1024_cropped
    Exhibition116dsc0946-1024_cropped
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  • The blockade is also in the mind
    The blockade is also in the mind (Havana, Cuba)
  • You’re free once you know the rules (London, England)
    Pass the Parcel, Jacob
  • The Last Supper Manley Villa I
    The Last Supper Manley Villa II
  • The Last Supper Manley Villa III
    The Last Supper Manley Villa IV
  • The Last Supper Manley Villa V

  • In the age of the global, what message would the residents of one particular place send out to the world about their home? In a new series, begun in March 2009 at the 10th Havana Biennale in Cuba, Sue Williamson investigates this question.

    Williamson had been honoured by the Biennale committee as a special invited artist with an individual exhibition, and spent more than a month in Cuba working on a new public art project, but at the last minute she was prevented by local authorities from putting messages up on buildings. Williamson’s solution was to invite artists and friends to hold up the letters instead, in a series of photographs which recall activist protest lines. A similar project in Harare followed, then Johannesburg was next on the list. Other cities followed.

    The message from Cuba was ‘The blockade is also in the mind’. From Harare,
    ‘For whom has the sun risen?’ In Johannesburg, the group asked ‘Who is Johannes?’ Although the messages are local and distinctive, they have a universal resonance.

    Making voices heard has always been a major focus of Williamson’s work, and in other work on ‘Other Voices, Other Cities’, Williamson updates an early theme of dislocation with Last Supper at Manley Villa 1981 and 2008, a portfolio of haunting photographs of one family in District Six, Cape Town, shortly before their home was demolished. In What About El Max? (2005) Williamson worked with fishermen in Alexandria, Egypt to voice their fears about being moved out of their homes.

    Williamson is internationally recognized as one of the leading artists working in South Africa, and her work is represented in numerous major public and private collections both here and abroad.