Artists and Apartheid

For all South African artists, but particularly for black artists, the restrictions and backdrop of apartheid had profound consequences. Education restrictions discouraged black schools from teaching art. On June 16, 1976, in Soweto, several thousand students protested a government ruling that required certain high school subjects to be taught in Afrikaans and prohibited black Africans from attending technical schools of their choice. Kay Hassan, one of the artists represented in this exhibition, participated in the protests. It was then that he met a group of artists who believed the safest means of protest was expression through poetry and art.

Black artists were not allowed to participate in other aspects of visual arts disciplines; they could not be curators, art administrators, teachers, gallery directors, or critics. Indeed, the Separate Amenities Act of 1950 prohibited different races from even visiting the same theaters or art museums. For a black South African to enter an art gallery during apartheid he or she had to be accompanied by a white person. David Koloane, an artist whose work is shown in this exhibition, had never been inside an art museum until he was in his mid-30s. Likewise, the Group Areas Act of 1950 with its restrictions on movement and travel served to isolate artists, who remained unacquainted with each other and largely unaware of each other's artistic expectations.

Finally, the Public Safety Act of 1953 identified artistic products--pictures, photographs, prints, engravings, paintings, and drawings--as having potential for subversive acts, thus subjecting their creators and those who displayed such works to incarceration. The definition of what was subversive was so broad that blank space where words or pictures were deleted were sometimes seen as a form of subversion.

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