The gallery will be open to the public every first Saturday of the month, from 10am – 2pm.
At the peak of the cultural bustle of the Cape Town Art Fair, Premier Alan Winde officially opened the Leeuwenhof Slave Quarters Remembrance Gallery in Cape Town on Saturday, 19 February 2022. It occupies the former slave quarters, Bo-Tuin Huys and the garden between those two important heritage buildings.
When the premier moved into Leeuwenhof in 2019, he learnt about the history of the buildings, which made both him and his wife reflect on the painful history of slavery and the Remembrance Gallery is the result of the process that followed.
Mirjam Asmal and the Association of Visual Arts has curated the first art exhibition called “Enslaved Lives”, the storyof the slave quarters and the lived reality of the enslaved not just in Leeuwenhof but also in the Cape from the 18thcentury and of the trauma that remains.
Through this exhibition, tribute is paid to the thousands of people forcibly uprooted from their homes in various parts of Africa and Asia and brought to the Cape as well as those born into slavery locally.
The venue includes a display of objects from the Cape Town Museum, and rotating exhibition which not only honours those who were enslaved but is an opportunity for their decedents to make a living through their art, which will then be sold at the gallery.
Artists showing in the first exhibition: Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Jody Brand, Hannah Yason, Rory Emmet, Gary Frier, Tyra Naidoo, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Garth Erasmus, Robyn Pretorius, Tyrone Appollis, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Suekí, Jo Rogge, Tyrrel Thaysen, and Effo Munguanzo
Listen to AVA Director Mirjam Asmal and AVA Chairperson Cheryl Traub-Adler in conversation with JohnMaytham of Cape Talk about the exhibition.
https://www.capetalk.co.za/podcasts/144/afternoon-drive-with-john-maytham/602060/leeuwenhof-slave-quarters-remembrance-gallery-opened
