Masixole Ncevu’s exhibition SENSE OF SPACE – PREPOSITION OF PLACE is a call for healing, drawing attention to the memory of the land while directly engaging with global conversations around theories of space and place in anthropology and art. It takes an introspective look at soil as a vessel of memory and history, as countries of the Global North attempt to grapple with the consequences of their past actions as movers of earth with a limited understanding of soil and its histories. Through this, the exhibition considers exile, land dispossession, revolutionaries and war as obstructions to the sedimentation of consciousness. Coming from South Africa, with its socio-political history of land appropriation and settler colonialism, Ncevu addresses territory as the centre of ongoing and pressing political conflicts, particularly given that the question of land and wealth restitution is not yet successfully dealt with in the post-apartheid state. Through performative and sensorial practices, the exhibition invites visitors to participate in gestures of reparation and witnessing. The anthropological study of space and place recognises that landscape, space and place represent important sites for cultural meaning, social and political memory. Space can be used to carry social meanings that are culturally and historically constructed as well as contested, while a sense of place develops out of human relationships, feelings, and imagination. As Walter (1988) explains, places grow out of “the drama of dwelling together. They [are] intimately connected with the local, imagination, with the spirit of the place.” A hermeneutic approach is well suited to the study of culture, space and place as it explores space as a symbolic medium whose meanings can be read as a text. Also, hermeneutics recognises that space – including the language of space – convey a culture’s meanings about its immediate world, while place carries with it sentiments of attachment and identity, which emerge out of lived experience. In his 1932 essay Excavation and Memory Walter Benjamin similarly situates memory within the land. Benjamin likens the process of remembering to an archaeological excavation, explaining that memory is not a singular entity, like a fossil or a stone, but is lodged within a stratum of lived experience. To excavate a memory, the artist must conduct a dig, noting where the memory is placed in the mind. He writes: Genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through. For Benjamin, remembering is a process of accumulation, of digging through the dark to note the quality of the soil. A shovel cuts through layers of black earth, a pocket of rocks, wet clay and dust, in the same way that traumas, joy, and the banalities of life sit atop one another in the mind. The provenance of the soil thus signifies a symbolic attempt to achieve human ecological restoration and conservation. While soil is regarded as both primary and primordial, the direct material and embodied experience of soil is commonly cast as pollution. Loss of place means a loss of memory, while bringing the soil into the gallery frames it as an archive of nature-human interactions: a cultural record of dispossession and abject ecologies, but also of resilience. Soil retains a creative, irreducible power that forces things, affect and relations into being. The exhibition is characterised by a use of highly symbolic materials which allude to concepts of memory, identity, and belonging. The soil becomes a melting point, its power constituted through what it contains, the memories it holds, and its role as an ancient African carrier of prayer or communication with the ancestors. The soil is immersive, enveloping viewers in the smell, presence and texture of raw earth. In this sense, its presence proposes a turn toward land as a mnemonic of Black freedom struggle and place-making. Visitors will be drawn into a vast array of historical references and geographical and geological contexts, giving them the chance to explore different media reflecting on the relationships between self, memory, socio-politics, history, sovereignty, materiality, nature and spirit.