‘Norman Kaplan: All Shall be Afforded Dignity’ exhibition – Enterprise Centre, UEA

An exhibition of artworks marking 30 years since the end of apartheid will see linocuts and cartoons by South African illustrator and cartoonist Norman Kaplan on display in the Enterprise Centre on the UEA campus from 30 September – 18 October.

Norman Kaplan was born in Gqeberha (formally Port Elizabeth), South Africa in 1947 and studied at the local Technical College School of Art. In 1977 he left for London where he lived in exile for 14 years, working as a graphic designer and filmmaker whilst producing works that protested apartheid.

On display at the Enterprise Centre will be several linocuts by Kaplan including ‘All Shall be Afforded Dignity’, which was produced to celebrate the new constitution of a new democratic South Africa in 1996 and which is engraved in the window of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Also on show will be cartoons, designs and drawings Kaplan created in the UK as a contribution to the liberation struggle.

Many of these works were published anonymously in journals and newspapers such as Sechaba, the monthly mouthpiece of the African National Congress, The African Communist, the South African Communist Party’s quarterly journal, and its newspaper Umsebenzi.

These publications were distributed clandestinely in apartheid South Africa, passed from hand to hand and deemed ‘dangerous and subversive’ by an apartheid-era judge. Kaplan’s cartoons, viewed alongside his lino-prints, invite visitors to the exhibition to explore and re-engage with the spirit and values of the liberation struggle 30 years on.

Apartheid was a system of entrenched racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Significantly, this system of white supremacy was challenged throughout its existence – both within South Africa and around the world. The international anti-apartheid movement was one of the most significant, and ultimately successful, human rights struggles of the twentieth century.