DRAWING MEMORY INTO BEING for The Laboratory of the Future, LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, 2023
An installation about the relationship between material erasure and historical forgetting for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2023.
The act of performing salah[1] on the ground of a historic, racist, forced removal is an act of poetic protest. This act of resistance and reclamation forms the catalyst for this installation.
The Malay community of South Africa are descendants of enslaved and free Muslims. In 1871, during the diamond rush, Malay transport riders arrive in Kimberley and establish Malay Camp, a thriving urbanity and diverse community of mainly people of colour develops.
From 1939 a process of forced removals and the formation of racially segregated locations follows. By 1960, all of Malay Camp has been erased and overwritten by an apartheid civic precinct. Today the erased site of a mosque is still used for open prayer.
In the installation the musallah (prayer mat) is the architecture: it faces Mecca, it functions without boundaries, it is the worshipper praying on the grass, nomadic, diasporic – it is about a network of community – smooth space in opposition to the walls, erfs and demarcations – the straited space of unjust laws.
Newspaper photos form the evidence of the architecture of the destroyed mosques. As they get reproduced these photos have reduced in quality and detail, the diminished images reflect the fading memory of the forced removals. This fading of the photocopied image is inspiration for a ghostly and evocative marking of the erased buildings – drawing memory into being.
This project was supported by: Belgotex Floorcoverings (Pty) Ltd and Africa Futures Institute.
Project team: Office 24-7 Architecture and Lemon Pebble Architects
Production team: Dymeng, MGG productions, 3rd World Art Crafters and Digital Fabric
Photographs by Angela Colonna
[1] prayers performed by Muslims
