Beyond the ‘After Math’: exploring psychological decolonisation in a post-apartheid context of artistic praxis

Abstract

This article argues that recontextualising applicable theories of Frantz Fanon through knowledge-seeking art practices can contribute to the ‘decolonisation of the mind’ in a contemporary South African context. The multimodal social intervention, entitled ‘After Math: An Exploration of Temporality, Wounding and Consequence’, hosted by the Apartheid Museum in August 2012 (principal artist and curator Farieda Nazier), is discussed and analysed. The exhibition and this retrospective article are grounded in Nazier's explorations and subsequent application of Fanonian theories and broader postcolonial postulations of place, gender and class. The intervention borrows from Fanon's theories and phenomenological approach to racial discrimination, using them as a point of departure to evoke memory and convey personal struggles within an apartheid and post-apartheid society through a number of visual and embodied modalities.