Cover for Uncertain Curature

Cover design & layout for Uncertain Curature, offering perspectives on the role of archives

Uncertain Curature: in and out of the Archive, edited by professors Carolyn Hamilton & Pippa Skotnes, with contributions by: Fritha Langerman, Pippa Skotnes, David Cohen, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, Nick Shepherd and Alejandro Haber, Marlene Winberg, Carolyn Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer, Michael Nixon, Andrew Putter, Patricia Davison and George Mahashe, Danny Herwitz, Carine Zaayman, Kylie Thomas, Litheko Modisane, Alexandra Dodd.

The cover was commisioned by publisher Jacana Media.

From Jacana:
“The white cover and pink end pages insist that archives are not the sepia world of old photographs and documents consigned to an immutable place of selective remembering and forgetting. Rather, the book suggests that the archives provoke both a recognition of their forms of authority and power, and provide sites for multiple forms of contestation and intellectual enquiry, for nostalgia, concern, delight and revulsion.
The volume focuses on things: bones inscribed and bones prepared by archaeologist, labels imposed and lost in museums, photos “taken” and photos “made”, art installations, books, films, plays, drawings and texts produced, circulated and archived. Curators, artists, archivists, and users of archives of all kinds will find a rich and varied array of responses to the challenges presented by inherited archives.
In trawling between curatorial activities of the past, and curatorial activities in the present, Uncertain Curature offers perspectives on the role of archives in emerging practices in post-colonial and post-apartheid life.”