Sue Williamson
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Sue Williamson (born 1941) is an artist and writer based in
Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
, South Africa.


Life

Sue Williamson was born in Lichfield, England in 1941. In 1948 she immigrated with her family to South Africa. Between 1963 and 1965 she studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1983 she earned her Advanced Diploma in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. In 2007 she received the Visual Arts Research Award from the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
in Washington D.C and in 2011 the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship. In 2013 she was a guest curator of the summer academy at the
Zentrum Paul Klee The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum dedicated to the artist Paul Klee, located in Bern, Switzerland and designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings includ ...
in Bern.


Work

Williamson's work engages with themes related to memory and identity formation. Trained as a printmaker, Williamson has worked across a variety of media including archival photography, video, mixed media installations, and constructed objects. In ''One Hundred and Nineteen Deeds of Sale'' (2018), the names given by slave masters, ages, sexes, and places of birth, along with the names of buyers and sellers, prices paid, and the date of purchase of people from the
slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
in India are written in black ink on cotton shirts. The shirts are imported from India, dipped into muddy waters drawn from the
Cape Coast Castle Cape Coast Castle ( sv, Carolusborg) is one of about forty "slave castles", or large commercial forts, built on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana) by European traders. It was originally a Portuguese "feitoria" or trading post, establish ...
, and hung around the grounds until Heritage Day, September 24, 2019. They are then taken down and returned to India, where they are washed clean and rehung as an installation at the Aspinwall House in Kochi. These people were transported by
Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...
to work at the Cape Town Castle and the Company's Gardens. One Hundred and Nineteen Deeds of Sale Williamson incorporates the history and memory of the slave trade in order to transform the stigmatizing history into a history that can address and combat global inequalities. Upon opening the exhibition, Williamson read extracts of historical accounts while a woman picked up each shirt, read out the information on it, and then took it inside to be dipped in mud and hung on a washing line
Art brings history of slave trade to life
The installation tells a story of loss and symbolizes the essence of a person that is floating in the wind, but all that remains is their memory. Williamson’s 2016 work, ''The Lost District,'' is an homage to South Africa’s District Six. Like much of her other work, ''The Lost District'' addresses the effects of
apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
on South Africans. District Six was culturally and ethnically diverse until over 60,000 of its non-white residents were forced to relocate by the South African government during apartheid. This installation consists of plexiglass engravings of street-view images of what district six used to look like based on archival images. Steel bars cover the engravings, representing the actions of the South African government. During the exhibition, Williamson engraved a window in the gallery that overlooks the remains of District Six with a reconstruction of what District Six may have looked like in the 1960s. With this engraving, Williamson aimed to “record the old buildings which still stood, mainly churches and mosques and schools, along with those hundreds of cottages and terrace houses which had been destroyed.” Williamson has produced many forms of resistance art that examines the history of South Africa. and in 2009 set her artistic view to exploring
globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
with her ongoing piece, ''Other Voices, Other Cities'', which was included in Push the Limits. exhibition, of February 2021, in Italy. She is the founding editor of “Artthrob.co.za”.


Public collections

Williamson's work is in the collection of a variety of museums, including the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York, the National Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the
South African National Gallery The Iziko South African National Gallery is the national art gallery of South Africa located in Cape Town. It became part of the Iziko collection of museums – as managed by the Department of Arts and Culture – in 2001. It then became an agen ...
in Cape Town, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
in London. Williamson has also participated in group exhibitions including ''The Short Century'' (2001), ''Liberated Voices'' (1999), the Johannesburg Art Biennale (in 1997 and 1995), the Havana Biennale (1994), and the
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
(1993).


Selected exhibitions

* 2000 Messages from the Moat, Archive Building, Den Haag, the Netherlands * 2001 Can't forget, can't remember, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa * 2002 The Last Supper Revisited National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA * 2003 Sue Williamson: Selected Work, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels, Belgium* * 2004 Messages from the Moat, Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town * 2009 The Truth is on the Walls, Wifredo Lam Centre, Havana, 10th Havana Biennale, Cuba* * 2012 The Mothers: a 31 Year Chronicle, Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town * 2014 There's something I must tell you, Iziko Slave Lodge, Cape Town * 2015 Other Voices, Other Cities, SCAD Museum, Savannah, Georgia, USA * 2016 Other Voices, Other Cities, SCAD Atlanta: Gallery 1600, Georgia, USA * 2017 Can't Forget, Can't Remember, Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa * 2017 Being There: South Africa, a contemporary scene, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France * 2017 "Messages from the Atlantic Passage", Installation, Basel Unlimited, Basel, Switzerland


Publications

In 1997 Williamson established ArtThrob, an online publication that features the work of contemporary South African artists. * * * *


References


General references

* Grania Ogilvy, ''Dictionary of South African Sculptors and Painters'', Everard Read, 1989. * Betty La Duke, ''Africa through the Eyes of Women Artists'', Africa World Press, 1991. * Richard J Powell, ''Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century'', World of Art Series, Thames & Hudson, 1997. * Philippa Hobbs & Elizabeth Rankin, ''Printmaking in a transforming South Africa'', David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, 1997. * Olu Oguibe & Okwui Enwezor, ''Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to Marketplace'', MIT Press, 1999. * Sidney Littlefield, ''Contemporary African Art'', Thames & Hudson, 1999. * N'Gone Fall & Jean Pivin, ''Anthologie de l'Art Africain du Xxe Siecle'', Revue Noir, 2001. * * Nicholas M. Dawes, ''Sue Williamson: Selected Work'', Juta and Company Ltd, 2003. * Emma Bedford and Sophie Perryer, ''10 Years 100 Artists: Art In A Democratic South Africa'', Struik, 2004. * Petra Stegmann,
Sue Williamson
' in Culturebase, 2007. * *


External links

*
Sue Williamson on South African History Online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williamson, Sue 1941 births Living people South African contemporary artists 20th-century South African women artists 21st-century South African women artists People from Lichfield English emigrants to South Africa Art Students League of New York alumni