Tribe/Un-tribe

Chief Lokothwayo with four indunas, from the Mariannhill Mission Archives
PHOTO: NESSA LEIBHAMMER

The Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) and the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative are working in collaboration on a publication centred on the provocation Tribe/Un-tribe and edited by Carolyn Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer.

The collaboration forms part of an ongoing APC project titled Ethnologised Pasts and their Archival Futures. Tribe/Un-tribe will accompany a future JAG exhibition, Tribe/Un-Tribe: the Thukela-Mzimkhulu Region 1850-1910 to be curated by Nessa Leibhammer, curator of Traditional Southern African Art at the JAG.

The exhibition and publication share an aim of bringing into focus the material culture from the region that existed in precolonial and colonial times, and which is now located in collections. Tribe/Un-tribe examines the objects and their histories, situating them as archive rather than ethnology or fine art. Of particular interest are the processes through which this material has been collected, classified and stored and what happens when collections of ethnographic objects are construed as archive.

The book of essays will incorporate work undertaken in the APC as well as work by a range of other contributors on linked aspects of the material and expressive culture of the region and its collections. The publication will be a 'stand alone' volume that holds its relevance independent of the exhibition rather than existing primarily as a catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.

Contributors to Tribe/Un-tribe will gather together in March in Johannesburg to discuss draft papers and their visual content.

Contributors include Sara Byala, Mwalela Cele, Nokuthula Cele, Sam Challis, André Croucamp, Norman Etherington, Jeff Guy, Carolyn Hamilton, Heather Hughes, Caroline Jeannerat , Sandra Klopper, Nessa Leibhammer, Hlonipha Mokoena, Anitra Nettleton, Nontobeko Ntombela, Christoph Rippe, Anne Wanless, Catherine Elliot Weinberg and John Wright.