Where do you place your grief when you've been displaced? Sue Williamson has something to tell you

When I walked into Sue Williamson's retrospective exhibition, There's something I must tell you, I was instantly drawn to the image of The Last Supper. Only later did I realize why—it was because I’ve been carrying around a quiet, relentless grief after recently being displaced.

There’s something about collective grief that makes you feel seen.

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Behind me, six empty chairs sit quietly—once occupied by the Ebrahim family at their last supper before being forcibly removed from their home. There’s a clock that governs our lives, and then there’s the invisible one—the one we only remember when life jolts us, reminding us that everything we hold dear is temporary. Death is expected, even though its timing is uncertain. But forced removal? That’s something else entirely. It doesn’t just take your home—it strips away your dignity, your belonging, your identity. It hollows out the rituals of everyday life.

You wave to a neighbour not realising it’s your last hello. You lock the door, unaware it’s your final time doing so with your name on the lease. Then, without warning, you walk through the passage of time and find yourself... addressless. You feel it most sharply in the small moments—when filling out a form or during a casual “Where are you based?” Suddenly, there’s a blank space. A pause. An awkward silence.

There’s something about The Last Supper that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. When you finally confront your grief, you realise it’s been waiting—unspoken, unacknowledged. But where do you put it? There’s no home for it. No home for you.

For the people of District Six—a vibrant, multiracial community in Cape Town that was declared a “whites-only area” in 1966—this exhibition is not just art. It’s remembrance. It’s reckoning. For those who were forcefully removed, The Last Supper is a haunting reminder of impermanence. When your identity is rooted in a place, to lose it is a kind of death. The end of life as you know it.

As I reflect on my own circumstances—caught in the churn of a city reshaped by digital nomads and rising costs—I feel helpless. I think of all the people walking around today, quietly shouldering their grief, looking for a place to set it down.

But inside the walls of the Iziko Museum, Sue Williamson has built a space for these stories to be heard. For the pain to be seen. A woman standing beside me shares that she was just a child when her family was evicted from District Six. They were given R2000 to rebuild their lives. The pain in her voice is layered—not just historical, but present. Adult logic faltering in the face of something so senseless. I am triggered.

Today, I’m in a dispute with my landlord over a deposit. After five years of never missing a payment, he has chosen to end our lease. There’s a foreigner at the door with stronger currency, and now my daughter and I are being rushed to leave. Half a million rand in rent later, we walk out the door for the last time—unaware that hours earlier, we had our own last supper.

My daughter quietly takes down the Welcome Home sign from her play corner and tapes a new one to her suitcase. It reads: Going places.

We are displaced. I am angry. I am seething. I am broken.

And still, behind me, those six chairs remain—once occupied by the Ebrahim family, evicted in 1981 when the Apartheid government demolished one of the last homes in District Six: Manley Villa. Now those chairs sit in the gallery, holding the weight of memory, symbols of collective grief. And the art around them stands as witness—documenting history in real time, offering space for reflection, for unspoken stories, for grief that still seeks a home.