
Facts and Fabulations, an exhibition of the New Archival Visions Programme at the CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab will open on 9 April, 2026. The opening will be preceded by a short talk by the curator Marcos Martins and the assistant curator Katlego Tiisetso Nkoana.
Date: Thursday, 9 April, 2026
Venue: Iyatsiba Lab, Centre for Humanities Research, 66 Greatmore Street, Woodstock (enter via Regents St).
Exhibition opening: 17:30 for 18:00
Exhibition dates: 10 April 2026 to 10 July, 2026
RSVP: centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za
(Please note that future access to the exhibition will be made available through Quicket)
Facts and Fabulations is composed largely of archival material from the University of the Western Cape–Robben Island Museum–Mayibuye Archives. Seven images appear on the walls, whose dimensions are expanded through the recorded fabulations of UWC students in response to them. Augmented Reality installations that open into related archival materials also expand the dimensions. Curated by Marcos Martins, it results from an intensive research period undertaken during a Digital Curatorial Fellowship in the New Archival Visions Programme at the Centre for Humanities Research, UWC.
Positioned as a countercurrent to the rapid consumption of images and information of today, the exhibition provides an experience in which fabulations and facts intertwine, slowing the acts of viewing while layering the processes of learning. Fabulations are understood not merely as exercises in imagination, but as that which marks our repertoire: where we come from. Facts are released from ossified official narratives and conceptualized instead as the very movement toward facts. Ultimately, attention is drawn to our current regime of truth, suggesting that truth remains possible when space and time are opened for its experience.
