A team of design researchers at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom in collaboration with social documentarian Celeste Mckenzie, creative industries practitioners, and heritage specialists in South Africa launched the Named after Nelson exhibition, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation on April 25.
The exhibition was designed to inspire public engagement with its content and encourage visitors to contribute their thoughts, feelings, and observations to shape the exhibition’s public image.
The exhibition will be live from April 24 until September 2024.
The case study locations are colour-coded to match the unique colours of the South African national flag.
- Black: Mandela Village, Hammanskraal
- White: Nelson Mandela Bridge, Braamfontein
- Red: Nelson Mandela Theatre, Braamfontein
- Blue: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, Houghton
- Green: Nelson Mandela Park, Mamelodi
- Yellow: Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton.
Nelson Mandela Foundation’s head of archive and research, Razia Saleh said the foundation immediately accepted the opportunity to deepen the collaboration with the Named after Nelson project when a research fellow at Loughborough University Dr Yolandi Burger reached out.
“It provided a concrete opportunity to extend discussions with the project team that first began in 2021,” said Saleh.
“Through careful research and curation, the Named after Nelson exhibition explores six places named after Nelson Mandela in the Gauteng province. It explores the contrast in imagery, information, location, and access which links back to the archive held in custody at the foundation.
Named after Nelson is rooted in research undertaken between researchers at Loughborough University and Tongji University in China from 2018 to 2021.
That research, under the guise of Repositioning Graphic Heritage, set to answer two questions:
- What new perspectives can graphic design contribute to design for urban heritage?
- How can participatory design approach urban graphic heritage for greater social cohesion?
The photography was undertaken by several people featured in the exhibition, each looking through the lens with different motivations, but all with a sense of inquiry.
The final selection of images evolved from hundreds taken and were synthesised to work within a composition of photographs depicting a sense of character.
The photography team included:
- Celeste McKenzie: A social documentarian who uncovers the stories of communities, highlighted by her notable ethnographic study on the Khomani San.
- Robert Harland: Uses photography to document the macro, meso, and micrographic scales at which cities and urban places function through their graphic objects.
- Yolandi Burger: Investigates urban graphic heritage, place branding and commemorative spaces within a South African context.
- Market workshop graduates: Tsepiso Mahooe, Matsediso Dichaba and Khaya Njabulo Malinga documented the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Braamfontein. Their participation brought innovative perspectives to the project, showcasing the bridge’s significance through their lenses.
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