During Lalela’s June/July Holiday Programme, three of Lalela’s programmes made artwork inspired by and in response to the When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting exhibition. A selection of the learners’ artworks will be exhibited in an exhibition titled A Gaze from Within curated by Amy Cornfield, Education Specialist at Zeitz MOCAA’s Centre for Art Education and Firdous Hendricks, Executive Director of Lalela. The opening of A Gaze from Within, on level 0 of the museum, coincides with the closing ceremony of When We See Us on Wednesday, 23 August and will be on show until Sunday, 3 September. Guests attending the closing ceremony will be treated to a special viewing of the exhibition. For more on the When We See Us closing ceremony, click here.
The Exhibition title, A Gaze from Within, comes from the title of the Lalela Holiday Programme Project. Inspired by the paintings in the museum’s landmark exhibition, grade 9 to 12 learners from five high schools (Salt River High, Harold Cressy High, Hout Bay High, Silikamva High and Masiphumelele High) on the Zeitz MOCAA, Hout Bay and Masiphumelele Lalela Programmes, created paintings and photomontages about their lives in response to one of the When We See Us exhibition’s six themes: The Everyday, Joy and Revelry, Repose, Sensuality, Spirituality and Triumph and Emancipation. The workshops encourage learners to explore and celebrate their individual subjectivities by looking inward and around their personal experiences as young bodies of colour in a South African context.
The learners will visit the museum to view their artworks on show in the exhibition.
Zeitz MOCAA’s curatorial and educational programming is generously supported by Gucci and the Mellon Foundation. Seismography of Struggle is furthermore supported by the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS).