Sue Williamson’s practice, rooted in South African history and influenced by her journalistic background, spans photography, drawing, and installation to probe themes of memory and remembrance. Throughout her work, injustice (and perhaps even evil) is made vividly evident. Since the early 1970s, she has documented various communities’ pleas for justice, explored the harsh realities of apartheid, and laid bare the lingering effects of colonialism—including migration, dispossession, and dislocation. Her first-ever retrospective, “There’s something I must tell you,” on view at Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town through September 24, reveals these throughlines.
In Williamson’s work, dialogue is central. The titular video There’s something I must tell you (2013) showcases six intimate conversations between veteran women activists who fought against apartheid alongside their granddaughters. The women onscreen retell history in order to grapple with it, preserve it, and remember it. Their reflections on past struggles lay bare the many ways in which freedom has not yet come—an idea captured so profoundly in Letta Mbulu’s iconic 1992 song “Not Yet Uhuru,” which became a powerful expression of the journey still necessary for true liberation. The song echoes conversations in Williamson’s video, speaking to the enduring struggle and the ongoing desire for a freedom yet to be fully realized in South Africa.
What this exhibition achieves is a deeply intimate telling of South Africa’s history, told over five decades and often highlighting moments of great intensity. What is special about this retrospective—and Williamson’s practice in general—is the way it traces history so closely, spanning well-known events like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) or Nelson Mandela’s release from prison to lesser-known narratives of pain and suffering that became daily realities for many communities: Cradock, District Six, Crossroads.
Williamson’s practice is deeply feminist, too, often highlighting women and their various roles in society. “A Few South Africans” (1982–87) is a collection of photo etchings and screenprint collages that document and celebrate women who have significant impacts on the country’s history. Begun during Williamson’s time in Crossroads, a community in Cape Town that was earmarked for demolition by the apartheid state, “A Few South Africans” was inspired by the portrait of Elizabeth Paul, a Xhosa faith healer whose portrait the artist encountered in nearly every home in the community. This image became ubiquitous as a way for the community to commemorate someone they respected and wished to honor. Williamson continued the tradition, documenting other women whose leadership was paramount in the liberation struggle, regardless of whether they had been recognized—including Helen Joseph, Winnie Mandela, Annie Silinga, and Mamphela Ramphele.
Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by Williamson’s powerful installation Messages from the Moat (1997)—a striking work featuring 1,400 glass bottles, each inscribed with the name, birthplace, and sale price of an enslaved person brought to Cape Town between 1658 and 1700. These bottles are suspended in a fishing net, dripping with water. The rest of the show is spread across several rooms, each organized thematically, moving away from linear conceptions of memory and instead reassembling fragments back together like a jigsaw puzzle—no doubt with a few pieces of narrative missing.
At the heart of the exhibition is a new installation, Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying (2024). Six chairs are arranged in a circle facing one another atop a raised platform, in a manner evoking the scattered remnants of District Six today, an area where 60,000 people were forcibly removed from their homes following the apartheid government’s enactment of the Group Areas Act, which declared the area a “Whites Only” zone. The chairs are immersed in a powerful soundscape with the voices of former residents recounting their lives past and present. These chairs were gifted to Williamson by the Ebrahim family, whom she worked with on her 1981 “The Last Supper at Manley Villa” series, documenting their home just days before it was demolished as part of the forced removals.
One might wonder why it is necessary to keep revisiting history the way Williamson chooses to. Part of her project involves restoring dignity to those whose stories have been forgotten. But does art risk mythologizing these histories? This is the challenge I see within Williamson’s work: how can artists excavate and preserve history without reducing it to myth?
One way she navigates this tension is by engaging history in all its complexities, carefully detailing its nuances and difficult truths. She is interested in that space between memory and memorial, often critiquing traditional forms of monument making. Turning to more ephemeral materials, she also critiques the idea that towering and tangible objects ought to be the ones bestowed with lasting significance. In the gallery titled “Africa and her colonizers,” Williamson offers this critique in the form of a skeletal obelisk, mounted in the center of the room. Unlike the imposing permanence of traditional monuments, the obelisk boasts a delicate frame made of steel struts, and is covered in embroidered panels that depict scenes from a 1980s coloring book used by Afrikaner parents to explain the Boer War to their children. Sculptures in steel and stone may seem permanent and authoritative, but memories are passed down in many forms.
