Michael Armitage’s Necklacing: South African Memory Seen From New York

Michael Armitage, Necklacing (2016), painted on Lubugo bark cloth. Seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the work evokes apartheid-era violence through implication rather than depiction.

Michael Armitage’s Necklacing (2016), now seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a painting that refuses spectacle while remaining inseparable from violence.

There is no crowd, no fire, no explicit act. Instead, Armitage presents a solitary, exposed figure set within a lush green landscape, marked only by a dark circular form at the neck.

For viewers familiar with South African history, recognition is immediate; for others, it arrives later, through knowledge and unease. The power of Necklacing lies precisely in this restraint — in how apartheid-era brutality is carried through implication rather than depiction, memory rather than image

The violence exists in implication, not depiction. It unfolds inside the viewer — through memory, knowledge, and association. For South Africans, the reference is immediate. For others, it may come later, through reading or explanation. Either way, the painting refuses spectacle.

This matters. African violence has so often been rendered legible for global audiences through shock and excess. Michael Armitage’s Necklacing resists that economy entirely.

Seeing South Africa From Elsewhere

Encountering Michael Armitage’s Necklacing in New York sharpened its impact rather than softening it. Distance did not make the history feel smaller; it made it feel exposed.

In that gallery, surrounded by an international audience, I became acutely aware of how South African apartheid violence travels — how it is remembered, aestheticized, and sometimes misunderstood. Armitage’s painting does not explain itself. It does not contextualize the title for comfort. It assumes the weight of the term and leaves the viewer to sit with it.

As a white South African, this was particularly uncomfortable. The painting quietly implicated my own position — shaped by distance from direct violence, and by proximity to the system that produced it. The work did not accuse me. But it did not allow innocence either.

Material, Surface, and Fragility

Part of what gives Michael Armitage’s Necklacing its power is Armitage’s use of Lubugo bark cloth. Stitched together, uneven, and visibly fragile, the surface resists the authority and polish of Western canvas. Seams remain exposed. The painting feels provisional, wounded, repaired but not healed.

Standing close to the work, the bark cloth read almost like skin — vulnerable, marked, imperfect. The material carries its own history and labor, reinforcing the sense that this is a painting about rupture rather than resolution.

For South Africa, where narratives of closure often sit uneasily atop unresolved trauma, this unfinished surface feels particularly resonant.

South Africa as Anchor, Not Illustration

Michael Armitage is Kenyan-British, and his practice moves deliberately across geographies — East Africa, Europe, art history, and contemporary politics. Yet Michael Armitage’s Necklacing is inseparable from South Africa.

The term itself anchors the work in the apartheid-era 1980s, when necklacing became one of the most infamous symbols of how liberation struggle could collapse into brutality. Armitage does not localize the scene or narrate a specific event. Instead, South Africa functions as a historical and moral reference point — a site where justice, violence, and collective action collide.

Michael Armitage’s Necklacing is not a painting about South Africa in a documentary sense. It is a painting haunted by South Africa.

Vinyl Label for Michael Armitage’s Necklacing (2016). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Why This Work Still Matters

Seen at The Met, Michael Armitage’s Necklacing insists that South Africa’s past is not sealed off or resolved. It is legible far from home. It continues to circulate — psychologically, symbolically, ethically.

For me, this was not simply an encounter with a major work of contemporary African art. It was an encounter with memory itself — refracted through another artist’s gaze, staged in one of the world’s most powerful cultural institutions.

Michael Armitage’s Necklacing does not offer explanation or comfort. It demands attention. And it lingers.