Vilakazi Street Precinct

Vilakazi Street in Orlando East, Soweto, has the honour of once having been home to two different Nobel Laureates: Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, along with a number of other well-known local personalities. The immediate area has been witness to many key events in South African history, most notably the Student Uprising of 1976, and its inhabitants have remarkable stories to tell. When the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) began a project to upgrade Vilakazi Street in 2009, they were well aware of this rich heritage. The Trinity Session worked with a large group of local artists in a series of workshops, presenting concepts and works at a series of adjudications and exhibitions at Uncle Tom's Community Centre. At this point, The Library joined the team, tasked with ensuring skills development and assisting with the final conceptualisation, design, production and installation of the works chosen to be executed.

With a rich body of works presented, the brief to The Library was to produce as many of the works as possible within the limited budget. Additionally, the depth added to the work by the local vernacular as expressed in the workshops was to be retained. As the area is a busy residential and business space, as well as a tourist attraction, it was imperative that all the works be robust and durable, allowing the community to fully interact with this addition to the public space. The Nelson Mandela and Hector Pietersen museums draw a number of tourists to the precinct, and the works needed to engage tourists more fully with the history and heritage of the area.

The Library worked closely with the artists to develop their maquettes and conceive of production methodologies that would stay true to the originals. We successfully developed more than twenty of the works, including both large-scale public sculptures such as the Vilakazi Gateway Hands and the life-sized ‘Student Confrontation' sculpture commemorating the clash between students and police at the site of the Hector Pietersen shooting, and more discreet interventions like the ‘Mosaic Chili' insets that reference the use of chilli powder to throw police dogs off the trail of buried arms during the Struggle years. This was a particularly fulfilling aspect of the project for The Library's team, as the opportunity to showcase the inspiring work created by local artists strongly informs our mission and vision.