Installation art transforms an entire space. Unlike individual drawings, paintings and sculptures, installations invite people to walk in and experience the artwork in multiple ways. As one enters its space, you become a participant in the work rather than simply a viewer. 

During the 1980s, when black people in cities were confined to living in townships under the constant surveillance of the police and the army, an unexpected phenomenon briefly emerged, between 1985 and 1986. 

In the bleak environments of these South African townships, very small but colourful “parks” began to appear. Across Gauteng, young men and women in townships were creating places to make their township feel more positive and optimistic. 

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“Youths and parents, concerned at the dreadful state of the township environment, volunteered to clean up and transform the townships. This campaign quickly spread … Youths used junk and whatever they could find to build monuments and makeshift playgrounds; artists built ‘art parks’, hoping these would lead to more permanent art centres; youth leaders constructed rudimentary ‘clubhouses’; comrades built monuments to those who had died in the struggle; parents planted gardens.” (Steven Sack). 

Using only what they could find in their surroundings – car tyres, tree stumps, stones or old bicycle parts – they cleaned and cleared away litter and broken glass, planted grass, and colourfully daubed their assemblages with paint that was donated or found. 

Parks appeared in Soweto, Mamelodi, Kagiso, Alexandra, Katlehong and elsewhere. Many were named after heroes who had died or who at that time were still imprisoned, such as “Sisulu Park” and “Biko Park”. Others were painted with optimistic and positive words and slogans: names such as “Love and Peace”; “Freedom” and “Kissing Park”.

What became of those “People’s Parks”? They were sadly short-lived. In a time of widespread tension, army personnel in military vehicles drove over the People’s Parks in Mamelodi, while police dismantled almost all the other attempts to transform and humanise these urban wastelands.