| Between September 1999 and January 2000, the Museum for African Art in New York City presented an exhibition entitled "Liberated Voices---Contemporary Art from South Africa." The purpose of the exhibition was to offer the viewers insight into "post-apartheid South Africa" between the years 1994 and 1999. This five-year time span is important in South African history because it is seen as the "transition period" during which time Nelson Mandela served as the first democratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa and the majority-ruled African National Congress succeeded power from the White-elite dominated National Party.;The process by which a place, in this case, South Africa, comes to be represented in an art exhibition entails a great deal of decision-making by real individuals with real lives, histories, social relations, past experiences, emotions, and world-views. In almost all cases, each participant in the production process has real practicalities to consider and limited resources with which to work. At the end of the day, keeping within the constraints, the curator must decide which artists to select, which artworks to display, and how they will be displayed. And the artists must decide if they want to participate and what works they want to show. The exhibition is then left up to the viewer to interpret.;This dissertation is an attempt, through in-depth analysis of one particular case study---the "Liberated Voices---Contemporary Art from South Africa" exhibition---to explore this process of representation and try to understand this group exhibition phenomenon, the design and outcomes, methodologically from a participant-observational point of view. By "liberating" the voices from the "Liberated Voices" exhibition, that is, by allowing the participants, including artists, curator, consultants, and audience members, to comment on their experiences--complemented by data from observations and personal participation in its production---potentials and problems with this approach are identified. |
