Can art turn two publics (and) spaces into one? Joubert Park versus the Johannesburg Art Gallery in the inner City of Johannesburg

Abstract

Abstract Joubert Park is the biggest and oldest park in Johannesburg. Very attractive for white people since its foundation, this park – as the rest of the inner city – has been facing a cycle of decline from the late 1980s, marked by white flight, urban decay and violence. In the post-apartheid context, a fence was erected around the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), the municipal museum adjacent to the park, to protect it from the supposedly ‘dangerous’ people living in the area. From then, two separate spaces and publics have emerged, separated from one another not only by a fence, but also by mutual fear. To address this socio-spatial division, several artists and JAG curators have been promoting art projects in order to reconnect the physical and social spaces of the gallery with the ones of the park, and vice versa. Analysing thanks to qualitative methods (mainly observations and interviews) three art interventions that happened in the park from 2005 to 2010, I argue that public art can be a means to reveal the symbolical barriers that structure urban spaces beyond the physical ones, to challenge them, and ultimately to produce a more inclusive city.