CONSTITUTION HILL (2002/3)

The Constitution is at the centre of South Africa’s transition to democracy and its guardian is the Constitutional Court. In 2002, a permanent building for the Court was in the process of being built on the same site as The Fort, the city’s notorious complex of prisons, which had closed its doors in 1983 and been derelict ever since.  It had confined, within its walls, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, two major icons of liberation of the 20tth century. The Johannesburg Development Agency wanted to develop this precinct into Constitution Hill, a program driven museum, cultural and educational institution. I was part of a multi-disciplinary team drawn together to produce a feasibility study and a series of temporary outdoor and indoor installations on the site as part of this research process.

Working with the notion of the palimpsest, we designed 3 major installations across the prison precinct. Everything we placed onto the site was printed onto a transparent medium so that the image itself was visible, but so too were the site and at times, the city beyond the site. We were making connections between the past and the present, both in terms of the physical space and in terms of the new Constitution and Bill of Rights which we used as the template off of which to develop our content.

The Fort Entrance

The installation inside the massive gates and tunnel of the Fort Entrance interrogated the notion “Who is a Criminal” and introduced the different kinds of inmates who were held in this prison: from ‘saints’ like Mandela and Gandhi through to violent criminals;  and in-between, the mostly ordinary people whose only crime was that they were black.

The Rampart Walk

The Fort ramparts provide a unique vantage point over the site of Constitution Hill, Hillbrow, and the City of Johannesburg. The ramparts are a bridge between the past –- as represented by the old prison buildings - and the future – as represented by the Constitutional Court. Using South Africa’s Constitution and Bill of Rights as a template, this installation of 60 transparent panels maps the relationship between the site, it’s past and present context – and looks at where we are today, standing on the ramparts of a society in transition.

Three Women

Daisy de Melker, Nomathemba Funani, Jeannie Noel. A murderer, an ordinary woman spurred to become a pass resister, and a political activist from Durban. This was an installation in silk, sound, photographs and objects which interprets the stories of three very different women who spent time at the Women’s Gaol, in 1932, 1956, and 1976.