April 26, 2004
By Lucille Davie
AS part of the City's programmes to celebrate South Africa's 10 years of democracy, a resistance poster collection entitled "Images of Defiance", is to be opened at MuseuMAfricA in Newtown on Sunday.
The exhibition is a collection of some 400 posters, part of an original collection produced during the turbulent 1980s, many of them banned upon first appearance on the streets, but secretly preserved by a group of activists, the Posterbook Collective.
Upon the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, the Collective presented the posters to the South African History Archive (SAHA) and published the collection in a book, Images of Defiance: South African resistance posters of the 1980s, in 1991.
The book, now being re-printed, is a tribute to the underground poster movement, considered a major era in the country's art development, as well an acknowledgement of the role the posters played in giving a voice to the suppressed under apartheid. The book will be on sale at the exhibition in May.
A comprehensive education programme will be undertaken to maximise the exhibition's impact, to be rolled out later in the year. There are plans to develop a comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition, which will also act as an update of the original book.
The exhibition has been compiled in association with the Central Johannesburg Partnership, SAHA and the Posterbook Collective. It will run for several months in Newtown.
The City will be extending its 2002 Joburg Art City project with the Joburg Art City 2004 project, in which 20 works from a national art competition to be held this year, will be enlarged and mounted on the city's buildings.
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