Meer’s stolen moments of
When I first came across Fatima Meer’s paintings in 2008 I had no idea they would inspire my master’s degree. I had just been appointed the exhibitions and archives co-ordinator for the Women’s Jail and had enrolled for an MA in arts and culture management and heritage studies.
After seeing five of Meer’s paintings displayed at Constitution Hill that year, discovering that there were more paintings during my research felt a lot like crawling into the walls of the Women’s Jail and listening to the many voices trapped between the cracks of this historical site.
Meer, a mother, sociologist, aca- demic and activist, was a heroine of the anti-apartheid movement. She was banned, detained and jailed for her activism, which also led her to co-found in 1973 the Black Women’s Federation, an organisation focused on addressing the social, political and economic issues that affect black women. Meer was its first president.
In mid-1976, shortly after the Soweto student uprisings, Meer and 10 other women were arrested and held in solitary confinement under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. The other women were Winnie Madikizela-Mandela‚ Jeanie Noel‚ Sibongile Kubeka‚ Sally Motlana‚ Cecily Palmer‚ Joyce Seroke‚ Vesta Smith‚ Jane Phakathi‚ Deborah Mashoba and Lorraine Tabane.
Meer’s 20 paintings were made during her time in Johannesburg’s Women’s Jail, at what is now Constitution Hill, after she received paints from a family member. Her artworks were smuggled out of the prison with
featuring President Jacob Zuma crushing the head of a miner under his foot, was banned from Commune 1’s stand until Goldblatt the help of Madikizela-Mandela and their lawyer.
Artist Andrew Venter mentions being in possession of the paintings before they were smuggled out of the country, which forms part of the mysterious trajectory that seems to envelop the movement of the paintings until they were finally returned to the site where they were created. The exhibition, Prison Diaries, of all 20 paintings opened in mid-August.
In Meer’s spirit of defiance and determination to defeat the prison system, each of the paintings represents a stolen moment that either implicated or slipped past the watchful eye of authority and power.
My interest in the paintings thus led to an exploration of how such historical material could challenge the dominant narratives of women’s participation in liberation movements and other sociopolitical matters. removed his art in protest.
Political or social truths probably could no longer be told with photographs. Ed Young, the rising art fair darling (or enfant terrible to some) was turning heads with slogans and true-to-life sculptures. Commenting on the hyper-commercialisation of art, the pressure on artists to make art-fair art, in 2012 he produced the infamous My Gallerist Made Me Do It. It featured a small, life-like replica of Young hanging from a nail.
The “war of aesthetics”, as Enwe- They became particularly appealing because they refuted what appears to be a narrowly political and masculine approach towards representing history. The mundane activities the women are shown doing in the paintings propose a way to challenge what has evidently become a stereotypical portrayal of the history of South Africa’s liberation struggle.
At the core of the research was how narratives depicted in Meer’s paintings start to function as primary sources with evidential value that may offer the public, scholars and researchers the opportunity to use Constitution Hill in a much more meaningful way. The research thus also advocated for the paintings to be conserved and permanently displayed at the site to give a fuller and richer experience.
Constitution Hill is part of a group of post-apartheid museums that