event
Salon Sequins
18 July 2024 - 23 August 2024
Salon Sequins is curated by Jade Nair and Nina Milner. The exhibition text has been authored by Jade Nair and Ruth Ramsden-Karelse. Please note that the event opening date has changed to Thursday 18th July 2024.
All photographs from the Kewpie Collection and the Salon Kewpie Archive are reproduced with permission from the GALA Queer Archive. All photographs from the Sequins, Self, and Struggle Archive are reproduced with permission from the Centre for Curating the Archive.
On 18 July, the exhibition opening event will run from 6–8pm, and will thereafter be on show every week day from 10am–3pm until 23 August 2024.
The Salon Sequins exhibition, at the Michaelis Galleries, represents a collaboration between Salon Kewpie and Sequins, Self, and Struggle.
Salon Sequins will publicly exhibit Salon Kewpie’s ever-expanding archive for the first time, alongside materials from the Kewpie Collection itself as well as the Miss Gay Western Cape collection in the Sequins, Self, and Struggle archive, putting these resources in conversation in search of common ground — the theme of this year’s Heat Winter Arts Festival.
Salon Kewpie is a collective whose work centres on the Kewpie Collection: an important archival resource documenting life under apartheid for the gays and girls of District Six, held at the GALA Queer Archive. The Sequins, Self, and Struggle archive, held at UCT’s Centre for Curating the Archive, researches, documents, and disseminates archives of the Spring Queen and Miss Gay Western Cape pageants performed by disparate coloured communities in greater Cape Town. This exhibition draws on materials from the Miss Gay Western Cape collection in particular, connected across time to the Kewpie Collection by the resilient spirit of gay, queer, and trans self-expression.
Both projects are joined by a deep investment in archiving local LGBTQIA+ histories. Salon Kewpie is galvanised by Kewpie’s actions as a visionary archivist of herself and her community and by the ever-growing public excitement about the incredible archive that she has left us with.
