The portable Hawkers Museum was initiated in February 2003. It is through this ongoing project that I explore notions of cultural value, and who determines what is valuable in culture. I began to question the institutions of art [and here I include the discipline of art history], as institutions that to a large extent determine cultural value, and influence cultural production. To foreground this issue, I initiated The Portable Hawkers Museum that collects objects that cost R10 or less, purchased from the hawkers of Johannesburg. The Portable Hawkers Museum challenges the relationship of museums to the objects housed within them and the communities they supposedly serve through the kinds of objects it houses and the way in which the collection is displayed. The collection is exhibited in open public spaces, while documents of the public exhibitions or representations of the items belonging to the museum collection are exhibited within galleries. The traditional museum is therefore denied access to the original work of art. This ongoing artwork can be understood as a means of critiquing the institutions of art through parody. Individual works within this project are directed at critiquing specific institutional practices and conventions.
