Has Mandela’s vision of equality in a rainbow nation been achieved?
Sipho Mpongo, Wikus de Wet and Sean Metelerkamp went on a journey to explore the current state and feel the pulse of South Africa.
These young makers are on a quest to discover democracy twenty years after a new political dispensation. Sipho Mpongo struggles to grapple with the question: What is a ‘born free?’; Wikus de Wet seeks for meanings of ‘Land’; Sean Metelerkamp explores unsuspected ‘Idiosyncrasies.’ Artworks by these young photographers relate to each other by questioning, engaging and exploring intersections of past, present and future. The photographers ask us to pause and take a moment to look at the lived experiences of South Africans beyond standard histories. These images are collected memories, archives full of possibility. The secrets are buried in the land, but its power is with the ‘born frees’ and their impact lingers in unwilling moments. In the advent of The Rainbow Nation, Mpongo, de Wet and Metelerkamp in seven months traveled 24000 kilometers across South Africa. The photographers made pictures, focusing on their respective subject matters. The result of their making is this exhibition that gathers 45 photographic moments. Each moment is a document of: encounter, mourning, and history, but also of birth, death and grief.
Together, the pictures offer a view of the present as it gathers memory, possibility, and through Sipho Mpongo, focused on the Born Frees, the first generation growing up out of apartheid rule. Asking, will they allow themselves to be defined by the scars of apartheid, or will they embrace freedom, choice and opportunity? Wikus de Wet, investigated the cultural, historical and commercial value of Land and the relationship it has to the people who inhabit the space. Sean Metelerkamp, explored Idiosyncracies highlighting the absurdity of life in this magnificently puzzled country – capturing an unwilling moment, an unwarranted time and an unforgiving historical present.
