RMF and African Studies – 'it's more than an exhibition'

Head down to the Centre for African Studies (CAS) Gallery on 9 March for an exhibition that reflects and commemorates a "year of activism".

Some 75 banners, artefacts, photographs and videos from the protest action in 2015 that started with the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement will be on display. Many of the photos and videos were taken by the students themselves. Echoing Voices from Within is “more than an exhibition”, says CAS, who describe it as a “thorough archive and a record produced by the Rhodes Must Fall movement”. It forms part of a larger theme of student uprising the CAS Gallery will explore and commemorate. In June CAS will host an exhibition called '1976/360', forty years after the 1976 student uprisings.

The exhibition, say RMF in a statement, captures “with precision 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, institutionalised patriarchy and racism at the University of Cape Town … thus highlighting the salient issues around race and gender.

“Included in the exhibition are 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,” says RMF. “The signifiers of this ongoing political intervention recall the political zeitgeist of the student uprising of 1976 across the length and breadth of South Africa.

“Speaking to our collective consciousness and the continuity of grief carried through the physical and psychological wounds of the black child, the exhibition attempts to echo and reflect upon the often untold stories of black pain and the collective agony of peoples whose plight can no longer be ignored.”

Included in the exhibition is a wall curated by CAS called 'Contested Legacies' where Rhodes, Jameson and other “uncomfortable symbols and their presences are contextualised and interrogated”, say RMF and CAS.

Read more:

• Trans Collective stops RMF exhibition
• The Trans Collective's statement on their Facebook page
• Statement from Centre for African Studies
• Centre for African Studies website