
EYEwitnesses
(what happened to /gúï-an (Doortje), Ruyter, /úma and the /xam children)
installation of 12 blind embossment prints and 12 photopolymer etchings on 300g Hahnemüle etching paper, with wood and paper clamps.
50 x 65 cm each
2024
Eyewitnesses (what happened to /gúï-an (Doortje), Ruyter, /úma and the /xam children), is part of a body of work based on narratives told in the Southern African San languages |xam and !xun that form part of the Bleek and Lloyd Archive. A testament to the lives and cultural practices of |xam and !xun people, the archive also provides a unique and rare insight into the impact of the Dutch colonization of South Africa. It is a collection of 13.000 pages of stories and interviews in notebooks, drawings, paintings and photographs of and by |xam and !xun people, collected by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1870s and 1880s. Folklore and personal accounts were told to them in |xam by several men called |a!kunta, ||kabbo, ≠kasin, Dia!kwain and |han≠kass’o, as well as a woman called !kweiten ta ||ken, and in !xun by four young boys called !nanni, Tamme, |úma and Da.
Central to the installation Eyewitnesses (what happened to |gúï-an (Doortje), Ruyter, |úma and the |xam children) are four eyewitness accounts from the Bleek and Lloyd Archive, namely “|úma: his capture by the Makoba and his Boer masters”, “The |xam and the Dutch”, “Jan Plat's story about his brother Ruyter” and “|gúï-an (Doortje) and her mistress, Trina de Klerck” that document violent abuses that |xampeople suffered at the hands of Dutch colonists (the Boers) in South Africa. Sharing details which are often not spoken about, or covered up, the installation fittingly uses print techniques that alternate between visibility and invisibility, creating and disintegrating meaning and form.
Installation of Eyewitnesses (what happened to /gúï-an (Doortje), Ruyter, /úma and the /xam children) (2024), during the solo exhibition The Crow Messengers at gallery Lumen Travo in Amsterdam 19 April - 18 May 2024. All photographs taken by Giovanni Nardi Photography.






