Susan Woolf: Taxi Hand Signs: South African Jewish Museum Cape Town, South Africa July 10–September 5, 2016

Under the new administration of Director Gavin Morris, the South African Jewish Museum has expanded its cultural and historical installations to include temporary exhibitions by contemporary artists. For 2016, the museum hosted an ambitious, multimedia exhibition by Johannesburg-based artist Susan Woolf titled “Taxi Hand Signs and a New Shape Language for People Who Are Blind” that presented artworks based on the gestural language used to signal minibus taxi drivers. Because until recently South Africa's public bus and train services have been inadequate, over the past half century a largely unregulated taxi/minibus transport sector has developed that operates extensive commuter routes between the townships and inner cities. According to Woolf and J.W Joubert, “apartheid, poverty, and … deficient transport in and around cities, fashioned the explosion that is the taxi industry today” (Woolf and Joubert 2013:284). Simply put, the taxis that clog the city streets are visible evidence of...