Exhibition
Center for Historical Reenactments: After-after Tears
05/22/13-07/07/13
Conversations · Exhibition-Related
If the past were to be postponed into the future, would this moment be a memory?
A Performance by Donna Kukama
Cover Image:
“Museum as Hub: Center for Historical Reenactments: After-after Tears,” 2013. Exhibition view: New Museum. Photo: Mbali Khoza
During public Museum hours on Sunday June 23, Donna Kukama, artist and member of the Johannesburg-based platform Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR), will enact a series of performances that explore the politics of linguistic, cultural, and historical translations. The investigation spans South Africa’s recent past, including the historic 1976 Soweto Uprising in which students protested the teaching of certain subjects in Afrikaans and more recent eruptions of xenophobic hostility. These current and unresolved narratives are referenced through the use of audio, objects, text, and costume and will engender new readings of the works currently in the CHR presentation on the Fifth Floor. Throughout the day, Kukama explicitly embodies the physical and existential labor of translation provoking the public to participate, other times asking them to only observe. And in some instances, gestures will go unnoticed altogether.
Sponsors
Museum as Hub is made possible by
Museum as Hub and public programs are made possible, in part, by
Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
Education and public programs are made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller.
Museum as Hub Residency Program is made possible through the lead support of
Additional funding is provided by Laurie Wolfert.
