JIAS and the City Institute have sponsored an art and photo exhibition entitled ‘Invisible Borders: Cultural Time Zones in Johannesburg and New Delhi’ which was on show at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA) in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on 1-7 June 2017.

The exhibition was organised by Dr Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, a 2017 JIAS Writing Fellow. It was linked to a one-day seminar entitled ‘What does spatial transformation mean?: Possibilities for a more equitable, liveable Johannesburg’, held at JIAS on Friday 2 June 2017.

The exhibition explored specific areas in both cities in terms of the notion of Cultural Time Zones (CTZs), a theory of microspaces conceptualised by Myambo, a former Fulbright-Nehru Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, and a research associate at CISA.

According to Myambo, one of the objectives of CTZ theory is to illuminate invisible barriers that enable or prevent different constituencies from accessing certain city spaces.

To this end, the exhibition examined two adjacent areas in each city, one ‘gentrified’ and one ‘ungentrified’ — Maboneng and Jeppestown in Jo’burg’s CBD; and Select Citywalk Mall and Khirkee Village in South Delhi. It reveals how the ‘development’ policies of globalising cities are creating radically different microspaces – some privileged, and some very precarious.

The artists and photographers included Nocebo Bucibo, Laura Burocco, Malini Kochupillai, Leon Krige, Mwezi Macingwane, Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, Juan Orrantia and Ruzza Wazzi.