Anti-Apartheid Struggle: visual legacies and aesthetics of freedom

ERL Gallery (Liverpool) is hosting an evening event in remembrance of the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976. A youth movement, the uprising erupted in Soweto (Johannesburg) in opposition to being educated in Afrikaans – the language of the oppressive Apartheid regime.

Organised in the framework of , the event will include a two-part conversation between exhibition curator Dr Christine Eyene, South African artist Gavin Jantjes, and photographer Gideon Mendel. Followed by the screening of Biko’s Children (2008) by artist Breeze Yoko.

Activist, painter, printmaker, curator, and writer Gavin Jantjes was born in the year apartheid was introduced in South Africa. In the 1970s he received commissions from the United Nations Refugee Council and the UN Commission on Apartheid that contributed to raise global awareness on the injustice of the apartheid regime. Jantjes, whose political work was banned in South Africa during regime, will share about his journey into exile and the shifts in his practice, from socio-politically oriented works to aesthetics of imaginary and freedom.

A world-renowned photographer, artist and activist, Gideon Mendel has developed, over forty years, a socially engaged photographic practice as an act of witnessing. His partisan projects are made with the intention to be of use, to both record the world we live in, and also to change it. Mendel will share his experience of covering the anti-apartheid struggle as a young photographer in the 1980s, and revisiting his archive today.

Breeze Yoko represents a generation of artists born in the decade of the Soweto Uprising who have reclaimed the streets through hip hop culture and street art. A graffiti and video artist, founder of the Cape Town Print Fair inaugurated in 2026, his short film Biko’s Children (2008) explores the image and writings of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko (1946-1977), and interrogates their legacies in a democratic South Africa.

Free event, booking required.

This event is supported by LJMU’s Institute of Art and Technology (IAT) and Enhancing Research Culture.

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