CAPE x NL

Title

CAPE x NL

Description



CAPE x NL was a temporary intervention in the Camissa Museum. It was located in the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest remaining colonial building in South Africa, constructed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The building holds a painful history of displacement, enslavement and oppression.

The exhibition opened on December 7th 2024 and was open until March 30th 2025.

Whispers and shouts

We heard the shouts of the captured, the punished and the brutalized. We listened to the whispers conveying untold stories, beckoning for their voices to be freed.

This transnational, collaborative project of The Black Archives, Nancy Jouwe and Elise Fernandez, on behalf of the Camissa Museum, explored the legacy of Dutch slavery in the Cape. The intervention presents unique archival material, historical narratives and artworks by Adrian van Wyk & Charles Palm, Bradley van Sitters, Farren van Wyk, Carine Zaayman and Neo Muyanga.  

Language

English

Collection Items

CAPE x NL exhibition - promotional image
CAPE x NL is a temporary intervention in the Camissa Museum. It is located in the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest remaining colonial building in South Africa, constructed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The building holds a painful history of…

Fort Amsterdam
This pentagonal structure was used to take control over the surrounding land and the ocean. This military architecture was used across the Dutch global empire. Fort Belgica in Banda (Indonesia, 1673) and Fort New Amsterdam (see image) in Paramaribo…

Cape of Good Hope
The Dutch colonial presence in the Cape region is still visible in the language and culture of the people, in the architecture of the city and sites such as the Castle of Good Hope (see image) which is the oldest remaining colonial building in South…

VOC Letter from Ryk Tulbagh
Letter of correspondence from later VOC Cape of Good Hope governor Ryk Tulbagh (1724) Rijk Tulbagh was a governor of the Cape born in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He codified the slave law in 1753/4, which imposed a curfew on enslaved people, forbade…

Slave Registry Bill of Saartje
Bill for the sale of an enslaved woman named Saartje in the Cape of Good Hope (1828). Under Dutch rule more than 60.000 people were enslaved and transported to the Cape Colony. Enslaved people were brought in, from Angola, Madagascar, the Indonesian…

BPHAA paper 1
Black people in Holland against apartheid In the 1980s, the action group ‘Black People in Holland Against Apartheid’ protested against apartheid in South Africa from the Netherlands. Black people and migrants came together in the organization and…

BPHAA paper 2
Black people in Holland against apartheid In the 1980s, the action group ‘Black People in Holland Against Apartheid’ protested against apartheid in South Africa from the Netherlands. Black people and migrants came together in the organization and…

BPHAA paper 3
Black people in Holland against apartheid In the 1980s, the action group ‘Black People in Holland Against Apartheid’ protested against apartheid in South Africa from the Netherlands. Black people and migrants came together in the organization and…

Metamorphosis by Farren van Wyk (2024) - Self-portraiture
“Being born in the racial classification of ‘Coloured’, I question the identity politics I was born into through self-portraiture. What does it mean to be the project of a diaspora of multiple ethnicities in South Africa in its relationship with the…

Metamorphosis by Farren van Wyk (2024) - Eugenics
The picture ‘Eugenics studies’ (left) refers to the history of pseudoscientific racial theories which were used to justify apartheid policies. In the exhibition we highlighted the story of Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Camper was a well known Dutch…

Die Wingerd Bloei - Adrian van Wyk & Charles Palm
Die Wingerd Bloei was a meditation on persistent manifestations of colonial ideologies within ecological and social landscapes in the Western-Cape South Africa. The Castle of Good Hope is activated as a nexus of colonial violence and oppression…

Aboxan di Dommi ǁGauǂuis
Aboxan di Dommi ǁGauǂuis (Voice of the Ancestors) by Bradley van Sitters (2024) "Voice of the Ancestors" multi-sensory exhibition transported visitors into the world of the !Ora (Korana)- and Nama and N|uu endangered language families in South…
View all 12 items