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Human Rights Festival Art & Justice Tours
The Constitutional Court Art Collection curatorial team will be presenting two respective Art & Justice tours during the 2022 Human Rights Day Festival, hosted on Constitution Hill on 21 March.
To make a reservation for one of these Art & Justice tours of 2022, contact the curatorial team at ccac@concourttrust.org.za. The tours are scheduled for 09H00 and 11H00 and spots are limited.
The festival encourages its attendees to interrogate their values and belief systems by questioning our individual contributions and experiences towards realising a just and equal society which actively foregrounds economic, political and social human rights. This year's Human Rights Day Festival celebrates the 26th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution which preserves the rights of the people living in South Africa while affirming our democratic values of human diginity, equality and freedom. The three-day festival includes a soulful music line up with legendary musicians such as Vusi Mahlasela and Teedo Love, as well as poetry showcases, exhibitions and book faires. For more information, visit Constitution Hill Human Rights Festival.
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Hlabisa Basketry Engagement
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Angeline Masuku (CCAC artist) carrying her grandson and standing beside her basket in the Wits Art Museum exhibition titled Seen, Heard and Valued: 40 Years of the Standard Bank Art Collection. Masuku is a master weaver who undertook the conservation of the CCAC Zulu basketry collection in 2020. She hosted the curatorial team at her home in Hlabisa, KwaZulu-Natal, and facilitated the interviews of other weavers for the documentary Weaving Baskets From Stars (2021).
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In February, the curatorial team hosted Angeline Masuku and her daughter Nokukhanya Khumalo for a three-day long professional and artist engagement event with museums and galleries in Pretoria and Johannesburg namely the Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History, Javett-UP Art Centre, Wits Art Museum and Johannesburg Art Gallery. The event focused on traditional basketry collections while advocating for the exchange of expertise and insight on the care and conservation of Zulu baskets.
Over the three days, Angeline and Nokukhanya were introduced to Gauteng-based curators and experienced the exhibitions they had to showcase through special guided tours, including a tour at Constitution Hill. Following the tours, the Constitutional Court Trust hosted our colleagues from these museums and galleries for an intimate lunch in the private areas of the court, in celebration of the launch of the Art & Justice monograph Hlabisa baskets.
Read more about the event on our website.
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The CCAC is built on the generosity of artists, galleries and other benefactors who have donated artworks to be displayed in the Constitutional Court.
Thabang Lehobye and Msaki's Blood Guns and Revolutions: Passage of Time (2020), a stop-motion video artwork, was offered for donation by the artists and accepted by our Artworks Committee earlier this year. The collaboration between the artists serves as the music video for Msaki's song of the same name, a commemoration of the lives lost during the Marikana Massacre.
The Artworks Committee noted that the artwork is deeply moving as it draws on historical references of how politicians have failed society during apartheid and in contemporary South Africa. Through representing the continual struggles and violence faced by Black people, the video work links to Judith Mason’s The Man Who Sang and the Woman Who Kept Silent (1998) while thematically speaking to Khehla ‘Chepape’ Makgato’s Marikana Memoria (2014/2015), also contained in the CCAC.
For more information about offering works to the CCAC, visit our artwork donation proposals page. A comprehensive collection policy review was completed in 2021, better guiding the growth and management of the CCAC for the years to come.
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Thabang Lehobye and Asanda 'Msaki' Mvana, Blood Guns and Revolutions: Passage of Time, 2020. Stop-motion animation, 00:06:16.
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Welcoming new committee members
The Artworks Committee decides on artwork donation proposals, and oversees the curation, conservation and other matters pertaining to the CCAC. The Committee is chaired by a judge of the Constitutional Court and includes another judge of the Court, also including four external experts who generously volunteer their time. The Justices ensure that the CCAC aligns with the Constitution and the work of the Court, whilst the external members bring visual arts expertise to the Committee.
We would like to formally welcome Justice Zukisa Tshiqi to the committee and acknowledge our new chairperson Justice Nonkosi Mhlantla, who has been an esteemed member since 2016. In addition, we are joined by two external experts: Tiffany de Waynecourt-Steele and Tshegofatso Mabaso. De Waynecourt-Steele is a South African barrister and UK solicitor with an art law practice in Geneva, Switzerland, and a former law clerk on the first bench of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, clerking for Justice Zak Yacoob between 1998–1999. Mabaso is a curator, researcher and artist based in Cape Town, South Africa, where she is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Iziko South African National Gallery.
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Sophie Peters at the Norval Foundation
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CCAC artist Sophie Peters' Just Administrative Action (1996) is out on loan to the Norval Foundation and is featured in their current exhibition titled When Rain Clouds Gather: Black South African Women Artists, 1940 - 2000, curated by Dr Portia Malatjie and Nontobeko Ntombela. The exhibition features 40 Black female artists whose works reflect South African art of the twentieth century. Peters' work forms part of the Images of Human Rights Portfolio by the Artists for Human Rights Trust, consisting of 27 fine art prints depicting South Africa's Bill of Rights. The exhibition will run until the 9th of January, 2023.
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Conservation Advocacy
Our conservation work is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the US Ambassadors’ Fund for Cultural Preservation.
To raise awareness about conservation and the preservation of artworks, the curatorial team will be documenting our ongoing conservation of the CCAC to advocate for conservation while fostering conversations between artists and conservators. In February, fine art conservator Lucy Blumenthal conducted a varnishing workshop to assist us in identifying paintings that can be varnished through a demonstration of the process.
Read more about the conservation workshop on our website.
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Lucy Blumenthal assisting the curatorial team with repacking Thabang Lehobye's Mgusha (2020), a diptych acrylic on canvas painting donated to the CCAC by the artist in 2020.
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Staff Developments
The Constitutional Court Trust's curatorial team has grown in 2022.
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Francois Lion-Cachet was promoted to Curator of Public Engagement and is employed on a part-time basis while working towards his PhD at the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Law, studying the aesthetics of South Africa's constitutional democracy.
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Thina Miya (center) was promoted to Curator of Conservation and former curatorial intern Kay-Leigh Fisher (left) was appointed as a part-time Assistant Curator of Public Engagement to assist Francois while he is pursuing his PhD. The curatorial team welcomed a new graduate intern, Micayla Mohamadie (right), as part of our curatorial internship programme.
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Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and subscribe to this newsletter if you haven't yet for invitations to talks and other events presented in 2022. We invite organisations from the educational and professional sector to get in touch with us for presentations about the CCAC.
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