—defunct context

—defunct context is a premise, physical space and a curatorial strategy concerned with taking seriously personal archives as public culture. It began as a public space responding to a persistent colonial aesthetic in the Anthropology Museum at the University of the Witwatersrand. It has since functioned as a pavilion prototype and a modular immersive exhibition space hosting a camera obscura on an abandoned hill at a village in Ga-Sekgopo. In its current iteration at the Iziko Bertram House parking lot, it considers the space limitations of an art school while addressing the questions of restitution within South Africa and abroad. As a budding publishing platform, —defunct context takes a self-assembled artist-led publications seriously and hopes to encourage mores artist publication within an art school setting.

—defunct context is a research project by Dr George Mahashe at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art