Local Context • 1917
Shared by
Kathryn Smith, Roger van Wyk
Date shared
4 August 2022
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Local Context • 1917
636 die when the SS Mendi sinks off the coast of England. 609 of the drowned are black South African volunteers of the South African Native Labour Corps bound for France to assist the Allies in the WWI conflict.
An entry from the timeline included in the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance (2009–2010) at the Iziko National Gallery, which proposed connections between art production in South Africa and abroad against the social and political contexts that framed them. A revised version of this timeline was later featured in the retroactive Flight Paths (2011) exhibition guide commissioned by Clare Butcher.