Students singing to protest against Rhodes statue at UCT (photo by Xola Dos Santos) Students singing to protest against Rhodes statue at UCT (photo by Xola Dos Santos)
Arts Writer
THE Rhodes Must Fall Movement (RMF) is hosting a multifaceted exhibition entitled Echoing Voices from Within on March 9 at the CAS Gallery at UCT(University of Cape Town) from 6pm.
Included in the exhibition will be archival photographs that capture important moments in the movement’s history, as well as banners, audio-visual material and other related objects forming a palimpsest.
The signifiers of this ongoing political intervention recall the political zeitgeist of the student uprising of 1976 across the length and breath of South Africa. This exhibition attempts to echo and reflect upon the often untold stories of black pain.
Included in the exhibition is a wall curated by CAS called Contested Legacies, where Rhodes, Jameson and other symbols and their presences are contextualised and interrogated.
The exhibition hopes to capture the “multi-layered and intersectional voice of black bodies – the students, workers and staff who have come together with the aim of subverting white supremacy, institutionalized patriarchy and racism at the UCT, other institutions of higher learning and broader society, thus highlighting the salient issues around race, class and gender.”
“It speaks into the psyche of an unfolding political milieu, where voices, bodies and action coalesce to form a global movement that is breaking down the psychological walls of colonial reasoning.”
An undercurrent of anger amongst the student body was catalysed and brought to the surface by Chumani Maxwele’s radical intervention with the statue of Cecil John Rhodes in March last year.
This “birthed” student movements such as Rhodes Must Fall Oxford (UK), Decolonize Wits, Decolonize Law (UCT), Open Stellenbosch (Stellenbosch), Black Students Movement (Rhodes University), George Must Fall (UKZN) and Fees Must Fall.
During the exhibition there will also be a programme of walkabouts, seminars and other activities related to the exhibition and the RMF movement.
In the build up to the opening the programme will begin with a revisit of significant sites where RMF events took place on the UCT campus.
It will begin at Bremner Building, which is also known as Azania One, at 3pm, and later move to Upper Campus.
There will be performances along the route.
Pam Dhlamini curates.
l See the Rhodes Must Fall Facebook page for events surrounding the exhibition.