Issue 49 / April 2021
eds. Nkule Mabaso and Jyoti Mistry

Decolonial Propositions

The two events (ArtSearch, March 2017 and Third Space Symposium, August 2017) from which these contributions are drawn took place at an exceptionally volatile moment in South African higher education. The Fees Must Fall movement which started in October 2015 while, on the one hand challenging tuition and tuition increases, highlighted on the other hand, the structural inaccessibility to higher education. Moreover, it brought into stark relief the legacies of racial privilege sedimented in institutional structures that had not been responsive to the growing urgency for transformation in art institutions and universities: its hiring practices, student recruitment, the curriculum, the recognition of art practices that acknowledge and accommodate different epistemologies and aesthetics.
This has been a protracted journey in arriving at this open-ended ‘ending’—the consolidation of these contributions was forged from a period of resistance, protests, introspections and reflections, deliberation and conversations…

This publication marks rather a pause, a moment of bringing together the  contributions that provided a reflective rest to recall all the efforts that were drawn from not just the spark of this movement but provides a recognition that in spite of the numerous challenges the space to support engaged dialogue was possible.