CAPE TOWN - Acclaimed artist and activist Haroon Gunn-Salie this week took audiences through the journey of the concept and creation of his jarring Crying for Justice installation of 118 graves, spelling the word ’justice’ from a birds eye view, near the historic gallows at the Castle of Good Hope.
During a virtual public discussion on Monday evening, Gunn-Salie said the site-specific installation is made up of 118 graves excavated into the landscape, symbolising the 117 known activists killed in detention by Apartheid security forces. The last grave is to acknowledge activists killed in detention and who remain unaccounted for.
The installation spells the word Justice, as a reverberating call to continue the fight for truth, justice and accountability in post-apartheid South Africa and for the prosecution of those responsible for these politically motivated crimes against humanity.
“Crying for Justice started ten years ago with work that I did called Amongst Men and I continued that with collaborations with Imam Haron’s family. I was invited as one of the people that were responsible for organising the memorialisation in the 50th year of his passing in 2019.”
“We came up with this idea to create a sculptural graveyard of 118 unmarked graves, one for each of the people who were killed at the hands of the public security police in detention,’ said Gunn-Salie.
The graveyard highlights the need to dig up the past to reveal the truth behind these brutal killings and is intended to remain in the landscape until the truth is revealed.
Gunn-Salie’s mother, chairperson of the South African Coalition for Transitional Justice(SACTJ) and anti-apartheid activist, Shirley Gunn recalled her experiences in solitary confinement.
“Although as freedom fighters you would think we would be celebrating with the whole country, we were not free in fact that period up until the first election was the most tricky and when the most people died actually in the country.”
Gunn was detained after Haroon’s birth, and described how when she complained about the appalling conditions to police, her complaints were subsequently used in court to take her son from her.
Police also played recordings of her son weeping in an effort to break her.
“The 118th grave, it could have been ours,” said Gunn.
During the virtual discussion, Mary Burton, a native from Argentina who moved to South Africa in the 60’s and became a freedom fighter in the struggle and leading figure in the Black Sash movement, said honouring the country’s heroes was vital.
“This site specific installation at the Castle in Cape Town is highly evocative, it's deeply moving and a powerful contribution to the memorialisation of these cruel and tragic deaths in our very recent past in South Africa.”
“Honouring the heroes is vital and it is the role of artists to keep on sustaining this and the museums and the archives so that the records are not lost and the stories are told,” said Burton.
For more information on the project, visit: haroongunnsalie.studio/projects
Cape Times