Paper short abstract:

A reflection on the process of curating the University of Cape Town, Jagger Library Memorial exhibition.

Paper long abstract:

The Centre for Curating the Archive in Cape Town engages with curatorship as a creative site of knowledge production and in collaboration with the Michaelis Galleries will curate and host the University of Cape Town Jagger Library memorial exhibition, documenting the April 2021 loss of the Jagger Library. Together with Jade Nair, curator at Michaelis Gallery at the University of Cape Town, I co-curated an exhibition to memorialise the tragic fire at the University of Cape Town campus in April 2021. The exhibition will open to the public in April 2022. Together with Jade, we will contribute to the panel “Creative Knowledge Production and Alternative Approaches in African Studies” by reflecting on the development of the exhibition as an example of designing new strategies and methods for curating, exhibiting and commemorating that allowed furthering public engagement with questions around loss, remembrance, heritage and knowledge. The aim in bringing these experiences into dialogue with other panel participants is in developing new interstices of knowledge production, creative strategies and methods for African Studies, as is the incentive of this panel.