—defunct context
—defunct context is a premise, research platform and curatorial strategy concerned with taking seriously the idea of personal Archives. It investigates how history, memory, and knowledge are preserved and transmitted outside of traditional written records.
The platform actively facilitates research residencies and student projects, serving as a practical incubator for new scholarship and creative exploration. It emerged as a public response to persistent colonial aesthetics within the refurbished Anthropology Museum at the University of Witwatersrand, and has since considered the spatial limitations of an art school while confronting the presence of Lobedu material culture within colonial museum buildings. In the village of Gasekgopo, it functioned as an immersive exhibition space hosting a camera obscura on an abandoned hill, posing the question, “what kind of an image is land?”
The project currently focuses on how histories are carried beyond written records—drawing from memory, ancestral knowledge, and everyday materials. At the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, the project is manifested as a physical pavilion infused with Mafadi (salt) and camera obscura images. The structure is designed to offer a space for reflection on how archives are inherently carried within the body and the land, and how knowledge moves across generations.
—defunct context is a research project by Dr George Mahashe, hosted around the theme of intangible heritage in collaboration with Iziko Museum. The project is supported by the UCT NRF BAAP grant and NIHSS Catalytic Research grant Vice Chancellor’s 2030 Future Leaders Project