‘Can't forget, can't remember’: reflections on the cultural afterlife of the TRC1

Abstract

This paper focuses on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an ongoing process of collective memory and public culture. Rather than concentrating on the actual TRC hearings themselves, it focuses on artistic and cultural mediations of this process. It explores the ways in which the South African artist Sue Williamson has engaged with the contradictions, ambiguities and silences of the TRC process. Williamson's work on the TRC, which was exhibited in the South African National Gallery in 2004 as part of the Decade of Democracy Exhibition, reflects upon the ‘grey zones’ and limits of the TRC's nation building efforts. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section locates the TRC, as a state ritual of nation building, within the broader anthropological literature on ritual. The second section situates Sue Williamson's work within academic debates on the TRC. The final section focuses on Williamson's work in the context of the role of museums and art galleries as spaces of nation building.