Being towards [Death]scapes: Exploring the liminal as a space for counter-poetics to re-emerge in Avalon Cemetery

Abstract

Avalon Cemetery. A buffer zone that possesses substantial political agency alongside cultural significance. Its liminality withholds the spatial practices of individuals across the diaspora, revealing to us how individuals construct what some may consider un- conventional “counter cartographies of sociality, imagination and liberation”. (Matsipa, 2020) By delving into the multi-layered relationships between surface-level terrains and underlying subterranean structures using visual art, light is shed on the hidden inscriptions of past legacies duly rooted in the urban fabric as well as its people. Seeking to chal- lenge these structures, “Being towards [Death]scapes” aims to reimagine how individuals navigate physical spaces within the liminal realm of death, resulting in a reignition of one’s sense of self through the use of counter-poetics. By reconstructing the divide with the understanding of counter-time, between Black African, Coloured, and Indian territories, a structural backbone is formed, allowing new counter-spaces to emerge in a post-apartheid context