A Decade of Democracy

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first democratic elections, the South African National Gallery, the country’s premier art institution, mounted a comprehensive exhibition featuring works of art made and acquired between 1994 and 2004. This book, launched at the same time, presents in visual and literary form an astonishing record of the hopes and aspirations, fears and concerns, of South Africans in this extraordinary decade through the eyes of the country’s artists. Illustrated throughout in full colour, this beautifully designed work consists of eleven essays by distinguished commentators on the major acquisitions of the Gallery together with 150 or so reproductions. It provides a fitting way of reflecting on the changes of the last decade and assessing the extent to which transformation has had an impact on South Africa.