clive van den berg

Insurgent Citizens was an exhibition commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and conceived with SERI who were the content developers. Protest was the subject: who is protesting, where and for what reasons. In the third decade of the South African democracy what were the primary triggers for protest?

Permanent Exhibition at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (JHGC)

An exhibition exploring the Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme during Apartheid, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Johannesburg and then travelling.

Tributes, an exhibition celebrating the legacy of Nelson Mandela one year after his death. Nelson Mandela Foundation.

David Turnley has been photographing South Africa for over twenty years, concentrating on the struggle for freedom and the key personalities involved. This exhibition collects many of the images that document some of the significant moments from the struggle and end with the funeral of Nelson Mandela.

In 2013, Trace was employed to create the exhibition for the newly built Boipatong Memorial Centre. While the history of the Boipatong massacre is complex and contested, the vision of the memorial is simple. It is to honour, remember and pay tribute to the victims of one of the most brutal events in South African history. The memorial also honours the other members of the Boipatong community who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and democracy.

The new Soweto Theatre commissioned a series of artworks from Soweto artists. Clive van den Berg work-shopped with the artists to develop collaborative large-scale works.

This exhibition is based on the permanent exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. It is sent to venues around the world.

The permanent exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Memory
provides a highly intimate portrait of Mandela through the use of original artifacts and documents belonging to the NMCM. The exhibition is located in a working space with the business of the archive carrying on around it.
The Presidential Office is the pinnacle of the experience with visitors stepping into a space where Madiba actually sat and worked.

National Museum Gaborone Permanent Exhibition Design, Gaborone.
Clive van den Berg designed a new permanent exhibition for the National Museum of Botswana.

Coming to the City was commissioned by the Spier Arts Trust for a prominent site in London near Kings Cross Station.

Mosaic

Chancellor House is a place where the legal firm of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo was located in the 1950s. It was the first firm of African lawyers in Johannesburg and one of the few that was willing to take cases on behalf of the majority of South African citizens. The exhibition in the storefront windows of the building shows the history of the Mandela/ Tambo legal practice.

On the 10 December 2011, the 15th Anniversary of the Constitution, trace officially opened an exhibition One Law One Nation in the foyer of the Constitutional Court on behalf of the Constitution Hill Trust. For the first time, each of South Africa’s five constitutions was put on view. Seen together, they very graphically illustrated South Africa’s journey to democracy.

In 1908, Hermann Kallenbach, a Jewish architect originally from Lithuania, designed and built a home in Oaklands, then on the outskirts of Johannesburg. This house, which he named ‘The Kraal,’ was to become the place where Mahatma Gandhi lived with Kallenbach from 1908 -1910. It was here, that Gandhi forged his ideals around non-violence and became deeply involved in the “Satyagraha” or passive resistance movement to fight against the discrimination of the Indian community in South Africa. Gandhi left South Africa in 1914 and Kallenbach sold the house that was then lived in over the years by a number of families.

An exhibition honouring the life of Robert Sobukwe.

Kukude Lapho Sivelakhona: The Life and Times of Jonas Gwangwa, Johannesburg.

In 2010 Clive van den Berg was commissioned to design and implement mosaics for the Lebone School in Rustenburg. The mosaics are situated in various parts of the site but mainly in the library, a place of learning and research. 

The landscape depicted in the mosaic is a composite of many “ways of seeing”, knowledge that we inherit, house and use in libraries, knowledge that enriches us and teaches tolerance and delight in the varieties of perspective that history, the natural sciences and culture have bequeathed.

Nelson Mandela Day was first conceived following the 90th birthday celebrations presented by 46664 in London’s Hyde Park in June 2008. Nelson Mandela’s address to the crowds emphasized that our work is far from done: ‘We say tonight, after nearly ninety years of life, it is time for new hands to lift the burdens. It is in your hands now’. Launched in New York in 2009, Nelson Mandela Day (his birthday, July 18) is an annual celebration of his legacy and the ongoing work of his charitable organizations. Nelson Mandela Day intends to educate and promote the values that have come to embody Nelson Mandela’s life and work — freedom, democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility and respect.

After six years of design the permanent exhibition at Freedom Park is finally complete and open to the public. Described by Thabo Mbeki as " the most ambitious heritage project of the democratic government. The Park seeks to embody the aspirations of a nation that recognizes the centrality of the past in informing the present, so that the signposts for the future can be put in place." The park consists of several built elements each with a different function. //hapo is the museum building in which Clive van den Berg and his team designed the permanent exhibition

Trace was appointed by the JDA to develop one of the last remaining compounds in the inner city of Johannesburg workers into a museum dedicated to telling the story of black male migrant workers.

During the last months of 2008, the Nelson Mandela Foundation commissioned trace to develop a solo exhibition of Zapiro’s cartoons. The exhibited works spanned the years of Zapiro’s cartoons of Mandela, from the first drawing, which was on a birthday card for Mandela who was in prison at the time, to the cartoon celebrating Mandela’s 90th birthday. The cartoons were exhibited together with many of Zapiro’s preliminary sketches and sketchbooks, showing the interesting process, which goes into the making of a Zapiro cartoon. The exhibition takes us on a journey from the early days of South Africa’s democracy to the present. It is an entertaining and insightful way to view the history of South Africa’s democracy.

Trace was commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to design and curate an exhibition about the life and work of G.R Naidoo, the first black editor of Drum magazine, and a writer and photographer for that magazine and other publications from the 60's until his death in 1982.
The following extract comes from the Nelson Mandela Foundation website: “The exhibition celebrates the work and life of GR Naidoo, a newshound who was committed to reporting on South Africa’s freedom struggle and who, himself, lived the non-racialism he worked to help create.

With funding from the CWCI, Joburg Tracks is a site-specific exhibition that looks at Johannesburg and its history through the lens of its gay and lesbian inhabitants, as seen from the vantage point of Constitution Hill and constitutional equality. Using extraordinary archives and photographs by David Goldblatt, Zanele Muholi, Sabelo Mlangeni and others, the exhibition focuses on eight people, ranging from Edgar Dlamini, a 70-year-old married Sowetan, to Vanya Maseko, a 24-year-old transsexual model. Curated by Mark Gevisser and designed by Clive van den Berg

Initiated by trace with funding from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Ford Foundation, Home Affairs is an exhibition and dialogue programme that examines the history and significance of the passage of the Civil Unions Act in December 2006, which made South Africa the fifth country in the world to legitimate same-sex marriage. At the Apartheid Museum till September the exhibition examines the different ways that people love, form relationships and make families. In the outer circle of the exhibition, we meet seven families, and examine the different forms that "family" takes in South Africa; in the inner circle, we look at the personal artifacts and photographs of ten same-sex couples who have been married –or who have considered getting married—since the Civil Union Act was passed. The exhibition aims to create greater understanding of what ‘family’ means in South Africa, and to provoke debate on the effects of constitutional equality and the Civil Union Act. Produced in collaboration with TRACE and curated by Sharon Cort and designed by Clive van den Berg with Hans Foster. With Mark Gevisser and Sharon Court.

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and TRACE, collaborated to create the exhibition, “SIYANI KHUMBULA - WE ARE MISSING THEM” which is a commemoration of the disappeared and a tribute to the families’ dedicated efforts to search for the truth and give dignity to he memory of their loved ones. The work on the exhibition was created in the monthly support groups, which the CSVR co-facilitated. Memory boxes created by the participants are at the heart of the exhibition and are part of a process designed to assist individuals to heal and commemorate their loved ones in personal and individual ways. Interactive panels serve as a vehicle for gathering and sharing information. Visitors who may have knowledge about a particular disappearance are invited to call the CSVR with this information. Families of the disappeared who are not represented are able to leave the disappearance at the exhibition.

A Prisoner of Conscience is a new permanent exhibition at Constitution Hill that focuses on the years Gandhi spent in Johannesburg from 1902 until 1914.

A series of large public sculptures in and around the new Taxi Rank opposite Baragwanath Hospital.

The project brought ex-prisoners who were imprisoned in the Women's Jail and Number Four back to the site to give material form to memories that have been made fragile by the passage of time. From the inception of the heritage site at Constitution Hill, it has been our curatorial intention for the exhibitions to grow and develop as new layers of information emerge and more memories surface. After the opening of the site to the public, we set about finding new ways to expand the reservoir of memory with the former prisoners. Given that we now had a basic understanding of how the prisons had functioned, we wanted the process to become more intimately focused on the prisoners’ experiences and to be directed as much as possible by the prisoners’ themselves. We had to find mechanisms through which memories that have been deeply suppressed or erased or perverted could be legitimated in the public realm with the former prisoners in charge of the process. We were keen to explore new languages and new material forms in which to express memories of this place.

The Women's Jail at Constitution Hill is the first museum in the country that is devoted to telling the story of the prison experiences of women during the colonial and apartheid era. The notorious jail housed struggle icons, criminals as well as thousands of ordinary women, arrested simply because of the colour of their skin. Through the stories of ex-prisoners and warders, the exhibition explores the resistance of resilience of women and the role that women played in the struggle for freedom and democracy in this country. The exhibition prompts questions about present-day issues, particularly concerning gender in South Africa, so that the past becomes a powerful tool for interpreting the present landscape as well as the future.

466/64 – A Prisoner in the Garden, is the first step in the long and exciting process of recovering and exhibiting Mandela’s prison archive. The exhibition shows hitherto unseen photographs and documents related to Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment.

A permanent exhibition developed in Number Four, a former apartheid prison in Johannesburg. The exhibition in the former cells gives a sense of life in the prison using the voices of former prisoners.

The design for the new Northern Cape Legislature buildings was the result of an international competition. Initiated soon after 1994 this was one of the first government projects of the new democracy and thus an opportunity to signal the new democratic state. The buildings were designed to fit into and reflect the landscape of the Northern Cape using organic forms, surfaces and materials that referred to local architectural traditions and images that created the possibility for public identification. The artworks were conceived as an integral part of the buildings, married to and indivisible from their form and function. The challenge was to imagine forms that reflected the context and to find images that could show a past that had been erased or suppressed.