The Indexicality of a Ritual"

An event is the creation of a new possibility. An event changes not only the real, but also the possible. An event is at the level not of simple possibility, but at the level of possibility of possibility.- Alain Badiou.

The exhibition " The Indexicality of a Ritual" interrogates race based thinking within urban-scapes in South Africa. Reflecting on the contesting and often contentious narratives around race and access, the project will attempt to perform an inter-textual reading of how communities relate to urban space, vis-a-vis their socially inscribed racial identities.

The exhibition looks into the concept of the “event” as a form of indexical behaviour, and the processes whereby “event” assumes phantasmagoric implications within the body politic. "The Indexicality of a Ritual" attempts to meditate on the particular event of forced removal and dispossession as it figures within black life.

The exhibition begins its line of inquiry from the rumour within academic circles of a written companion piece to Sol Plaaitjie’s “A Native Life in South Africa”. The project thus then attempts to construct a series of fictional accounts of what this lost companion piece would detail with regards to contemporary processes of loss and dispossession

"The Indexicality of a Ritual" is curated by Sinethemba Twalo. The exhibition features the work of Pakama Ngceni, Mbali Mdluli, Michelle Monareng, FM Ploch and Sinethemba Twalo

The exhibition is part of the colloquium "The Quintessential Other: Black Life in Context"