In Slavery’s Wake: EGS Students Reflect on Memory, Resistance, and Repair
“On the shores of the present, we are met by the waves of the past.”
This was the provocation that greeted students of the Urban Political Ecology (EGS4057S / EGS5057S) class on Friday, 21 August 2026, as they stepped into the exhibition, In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World.
Currently showing at the Iziko South African National Gallery until 31 October 2026, the exhibition begins with a vital recognition: we live in a modern world continuously structured by the histories of slavery and colonialism. Christina Sharpe calls these ongoing reverberations of racialised logics of Black a-spatiality and dehumanisation ‘the wake’. I
The exhibition is the culmination of a decade-long initiative by the Global Curatorial Project (GCP) — an international collaboration between scholars, curators, and community educators across continents. Cape Town serves as the third stop on this global tour. Working to tell interconnected stories of slavery, colonialism and freedom struggles across time and space, connecting global Black geographies, students were reminded that lives and landscapes marked by violence and harm also continue to embody refusal, resistance, and possibility.
Click Here, as our EGS students share their reflections from the visit.
Exhibition Details:
- Venue: Iziko South African National Gallery, Company’s Garden
- Dates: 22 May to 31 October 2026
- Opening Hours: Open daily from 09:00 – 16:00
Post by Suraya Scheba - convenor of Urban Political Ecology (EGS4057S/ EGS5057S)