The purple and the battered

There are shades of purple worn only by the battered. The bruised skin almost feels liquid to the touch and looks like a palette of the ferocity originally inflicted, as it still wreaks damage beneath. “We, The Purple,” an expansive multilayered showcase by the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) engages the bruised, still tender skin of what has made Pretoria the city that it is.

Although anchored by a group visual art exhibition at the Javett-UP gallery itself, “We, The Purple” has spread its colour across the city and reached multiple generations of both residents and visitors to the city. 

Pretoria’s monuments are the country’s history marked across the cityscape. It is apt, then, that this exhibition welcomes the visitor with a towering monumental work by the SA doyenne of sculpture, Noria Mabasa. Titled Union Building, Mabasa’s sculpture depicts women marching and gesturing, with facial expressions that are resolute and defiant. Some women appear beneath a banner which reads “Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo” (You strike a woman, you strike a rock). Echoes of voices singing the refrain “Siyaya ePitori” as defiant masses of the apartheid regime marched on in Pretoria become almost audible across the decades. 

Mabasa’s sculpture stands in the foyer of the On Pretoria/To Pretoria thematic segment of the exhibition. The curatorial statement in this part of the exhibition posits that, ironically, “The act of marching on or to Pretoria has ingrained the Union Buildings into the annals of anti-apartheid struggle and, more recently, served as a stage for labour marches and decolonial protests such as #FeesMustFall.” 

The works in the On Pretoria/To Pretoria and Tshwane Rea Tswana thematic segments of the exhibition present the many ways of being that the power axis of Pretoria has repressed. Jean Brundrit’s portrait of a lesbian couple (1995) is a print work that shows the silhouettes of what the viewer can assume is two lesbian women, whose identity is obscured for safety. Gavin Jantjes’ “The South African colouring book (1974/75)” critiques the SA colour bar and other racist laws at its most literal. 

The first floor of the gallery space is occupied by the Landing and Living School: Artist as... thematic parts. Landing — as the centrepiece of the exhibition — is informed by renowned SA photographer Santu Mofokeng’s writing about his approach to photographing landscapes. Mofokeng writes, “My approach to landscapes is informed by the cleaving the word landscape into its portmanteau component parts: ‘land’ (the verb) and ‘scape’ (to view) to illuminate and decode how we view landscape, and that this is based on our experience, knowledge and sometimes, stories.” 

The Landing theme also includes Jo Ratcliffe’s Nadir 14 through 16 (1988) — photography collage works of garbage dumps; Gerard Sekoto’s 1945 painting, Women in the Suburbs; Mmakgabo Sebidi’s otherworldly painting, The Spiritual Movement (1994); Irma Stern’s Backyard (1925) depicting a woman doing laundry. The standout work is Lerato Shadi’s video production depicting the artist’ attempt to swallow and keep down handfuls of earth. 

“We, The Purple” is the triumph of a novel, collaborative curatorial process that saw various parts of the cultural organisation contribute to what might never have been achievable otherwise. Gabi Ngcobo, the curator and former Javett-UP curatorial director conceptualised the exhibition before departing towards the end of 2023. 

Javett’s curator of public engagement, Lweendo Hamukoma said “We take seriously this commitment to public engagement and education because it’s not just a gallery where you get to see the works and then you leave. We’re in a very special position where we are able to curate these moments for people to engage with the works in various ways that are non-traditional.” 

Curator of education and mediation Puleng Plessie guides facilitators as they run programmes for the young. Previously, as part of the “Living School: Artist As...” thematic segment of the exhibition, Plessie had students making zines, reflecting on Marikana and other engaging activities related to the works on show. The Javett-UP has made a name for itself as an institution invested in prolonged cultivation of arts affinity among younger audiences. Plessie said, “My most beautiful moments are watching children come to the space, watching their eyes light up and they go ‘Wow’.”

Public-facing collaborations and audience engagements were an extension of the collaborative spirit incited by the curatorial statement. Khumo Sebambo, the guest curator brought in to realise “We, The Purple”, looked at works that were already in the care of the Javett-UP and works she could borrow from other institutions in the public and private sectors.

“It was a lot of thinking and collaborating with the team members,” she said, “to try to figure out how to make these works work within the themes. We had to try to form these connections between these artworks in unexpected ways. It was no simple feat to try to make works by black modernists work together with works by Irma Stern and Pierneef.” 

The exhibition introduces complexity to the conversations that art can have with history and the contemporary, and with its audience using works from collections by the Bongi Dhlomo Collection, Ditsong Museum of Natural History, Pretoria Art Museum, South32 Collection, Stevenson, Unisa Art Gallery and University of Pretoria Museums. 

SA’s celebration of 30 years as a democracy cannot be boisterous, because the beatings have not stopped for many South Africans. Discrimination, inequality, poverty and other torments continue to batter many South Africans into a purple paralysis. “We, The Purple” does not introduce novelty to the existing themes that form the basis of contemporary democratic SA. The programme focuses on those whose bruises might never heal as well as those who heal quickly, and created a space to explore the complexity of their relationship with Pretoria and, by extension, SA.

The "We, the Purple" exhibition is on at the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) until May 31, 2025.