Meet Pippa Hetherington Curator of “I Witness This” at Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

by Philip | Sep 11, 2026 | Featured | 0 comments

Creating a Space where Testimony Can Be Seen

Pippa Hetherington, of the Photographic Collective (TPC), takes us through I Witnessed This, the exhibition which she curated for the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, home to the Truth to Power Exhibition. An appropriate setting as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival, with TRUTH as its theme.

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Pippa Hetherington explains that the Photographic Collective was founded in 2020. Its purpose is to ensure that emerging artists from Africa and the diasporas are seen, especially those who have not as yet had international visibility, and have been sitting in archives which have been overlooked. The organisation is young, and is part of the story about who gets to be seen and when. It’s important, in this instance, that the exhibition is at the Tutu Foundation.

The Collective is a network, acting between artists, curators, academics, and collectors. It has open call sessions with institutional directors, and it’s a discovery hub. It’s very much about exchanges and being a member, you are based in that web of practicioners. It’s good to be exhibiting together. Underneath everything at the Tutu Foundation, they look at the subject of Truth and truth is not a fact, it is something that you do. Speaking truth to power was a daily practice for Archbishop Tutu not a slogan. Pippa took this brief to the artists and they started collectively working on this exhibition. It wasn’t to show evidence, but closer to where you were standing when you saw this photograph or artwork. What did it cost you to show it.

I Witness This, Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation,

Ala Kheir,

An example is a photograph by Ala Kheir, from Sudan, who photographed a riverbank in Khartoum where he had gone when he was a boy. .War made it inaccessible. His photograph is a memory of a place taken away from him. Also mentioned is Maheder Haileselassie from Ethiopia, who pulled photographs from the rubble of her own demolished neighbourhood, rescuing other people’s memories before they were bulldozed, A case of photography as responsibility – what do you do with what you have seen.

Maheder Haileselassie

The Foundation is very aligned to what The Photographic Collective is doing, by creating a space where testimony can be seen and telling and listening together. It’s about healing through the mechanism of photography.

in the introduction at the opening of I Witness this, Pippa addressed the power of healing and the importance of the space in this respect. For her, seeing the exhibition has been unexpectantly rewarding in how the artworks speak to each other in a meaningful way. The preparation was done from afar, while in the UK. Pippa made online visits with the artists, so this was her first viewing of the work as a whole. The work below by Pippa is a photograph transferred onto fabric, which is part of the exhibition.

Pippa Hetherington

“I Witness This” needs to be seen to be appreciated. And it has found a relevant home at the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in The Old Granary Building in Cape Town. The artworks are for sale. Most of the sale goes to the artist with a percentage towards the Tutu Foundation and towards future programming for The Photographic Collective.

The exhibition forms part of the Cape Town Photography Festival.

WHAT: I Witnessed This – Group Photographic Exhibition
WHERE: Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, The Old Granary Building, 11 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, 8001
WHEN: 3 to 30 September 2026
INFO: T +27 (0)21 562 7524 | E solange@tutu.org.za. | VISIT | See also I Witnessed This: New Group Photographic Exhibition at Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

TRUTH TO POWER EXHIBITION [18]