Making Art, Making Identity: Moving beyond Racialised Perceptions of Identity through Collaborative Exhibition in the New South Africa

This article examines the process of creating a collaborative art exhibition, 'Dis Nag(2) - The Cape's Hidden Roots in Slavery' (23 September-10 October 1998) which took place at the Slave Lodge (then Cultural History Museum) in Cape Town, South Africa (now the site of a permanent exhibition on slavery, 'Remembering Slavery'3 ), as a means through which seemingly separate and particularised histories may be shared and collectively owned across cultural groups, in moving towards a collective national identity for South Africans. The role of the exhibition space is examined as a means of shaping, through praxis, new histories in the present; as well as considering the major tensions and contradictions involved within such transformative processes, with a consideration of how such processes relate to current debates in museology. The study is derived in part from previous research4 examining materiality, shifts in perceptions of self-identities away from racialised constructs in the new South Africa, and focusing on artmaking as a medium for social agency, performance and shifting self-identities for historically disadvantaged artists in Cape Town, South Africa.