Uncontained and the Constraints of Historicism as Method: A reply to Mario Pissarra
Abstract
Mario Pissarra’s rigorous and considered critical review of Uncontained: Opening the
Community Arts Project archive (2012) marks a significant contribution to starting a
discussion that the book and exhibition aimed to provoke. That an interlocutor of his
authority has undertaken such an attentive and thoughtful critique does the publication a great
service and opens up pathways for further conversation and work on the Community Arts
Project (CAP) art collection at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). I would like to
reciprocate in a similar vein and take up Third Text Africa’s invitation to respond to Pissarra’s
review by thinking about the merits and limits of his critique.