Sarah Baartman Remembrance Centre | Hankey, Easterm Cape
Museum | Migration Map
Sculpture | Landscape of Humans Moving
white silk handmade lace, painted stainless steel 

Sarah Baartman Remembrance Centre is a centre dedicated to the memory of Sarah Baartman.

It is also an active and alive space that aims to educate and heal. It commemorates the Khoi San people, and uses the philosophy of humaneness and compassion as a core feature. The complex has different parts, focused conceptually around Sarah Baartman's grave, which overlooks the Centre. It also includes a museum, where Kim Lieberman's Migration Map | Landscape of Humans Moving will be installed. There is an auditorium for workshops and lectures, and accommodation for school groups, areas for craft to be made and sold, and spaces that envision healing.


Kim Lieberman's sculpture:  Migration Map  | Landscape of Humans Moving

The handmade silk lace circles that Lieberman makes will be suspended in a frame 360 x 220 x 50cm. Painted metal figures, trees, clouds, medicinal plants, birds that both reference the traditional landscape and refer to, and focus on, the concept of migration (through space - geography and time - history). The under lying feature of the extending thread is how we are constantly connected through time and space. And the irony that Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman who was deeply mistreated by a powerful patriarchal European society can still have such an influence years after her death, turning her historic situation around. 

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Architect Chris Wilkinson

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The design of the SBRC was done by Chris Wilkinson Architects. One of the interesting features Wilkinson included in his project proposal was including the work of six artists to accentuate different concepts that focus on the Khoi San | The geographical area they lived | Their relationship to nature | Both their historical and contemporary context


Above: Drawings done by Wilkinsonarchitects

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Sketch for Migration Map | Landscape of Humans Moving. Which includes white handmade silk lace circles held in suspension by extending silk thread lines to a metal frame of 360cm x 22ocm x 50cm. Metal figures, clouds, trees, plants, birds make up a landscape that conjures up references to Khoi San people, the plants they used, the geographical and spiritual environment they lived in, yet also has reference to contemporary relevant Khoi San, and people that are affected by them. The migration in Migration Map alludes to their migration through time and not only directly associated with their history of being a migratory people.

The sculpture will be installed at the entrance to the museum.

Below: Lace Circles in process:

Top: Rose Ground | a 'ground' in lace is generally the term for a background, or a pattern that holds the images or floral lace. Lieberman only uses the grounds in these circles. There are hundreds of patterns.

(made: May 2019)

Bottom: Lace is made on a 'pricking', a pattern that is pinned onto a lace cushion to show where the pins go. After the piece is complete the thread is starched and unpinned. | Ground: 8 Thread Amure

(made: May 2019)

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