(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Exhibitions present their narratives in anonymous spaces, in which the content is detached from the space in which it is shown. They are conceived within a ‘blank slate’ of the architectural design. Rarely is there a connection between the material and the history of the place in which it is displayed. This paper focuses on an exhibition about a Chinese family in the building where they lived and worked for 56 years. The place of the exhibition—a corner café—is important because it is prosaic, ubiquitous and familiar to South Africans—structures that trigger spontaneous and involuntary memories. In this context, the power of the space of the exhibition was writ large: the marks of wear and tear could be read metaphorically as analogies for other injuries. The structure and poignancy of a partially battered ordinary building was a tangible structure driving a narrative about the fragile and elusive lives of ordinary people of which the exhibition formed a part. It tells the story of the spectrum of the lives of the Hong family, and hints at the complexities of everyday life. The exhibition’s broad political and didactic aims point to a local story, told from the point of view of the family, that resonated with personal and public memories. Displaying artefacts and photographs from the Hong family’s private collection, the materiality and power of ordinary household items in this context became visually charged and were experienced in the display as ‘luminous debris’ to use French archaeologist Gustav Sobin’s evocative phrase. Accordingly, this paper focuses on aspects of an overlooked heritage, that pays tribute not just to the Hong family’s memories, but to the history of the space and tropes of immigration and belonging, that hopefully offered a way of understanding others’ lives.