Erasmus Huis presents

There Was Something Here Before

Exhibition by Zahira Asmal

October 3 - December 23, 2026

Opening: Friday, October 2, 2026 at 19:30

Erasmus Huis
Jl. H. R. Rasuna Said Kav. S-3
Jakarta Selatan

FREE ENTRANCE

About There Was Something Here Before
There Was Something Here Before is an interactive multimedia exhibition by Zahira Asmal. For more than three centuries, Cape Town (South Africa) and Indonesia have been connected by the movement of people across the Indian Ocean. Many of those who built Cape Town were exiled and enslaved from Indonesia, and the exhibition follows that connection, returning these stories to where they came. Bringing together research, archival material, photography, sound, art, personal testimony and interactive design, the exhibition reveals the city not as a fixed place, but as one continually made through movement, labour, struggle, care and acts of restoration.

About Zahira Asmal
Zahira Asmal is an urbanist and the director of The City, an independent research, publishing and place-making agency founded in 2010. Her practice examines how cities are made, rights to the city, and how design can improve access to it. The exhibition is part of her ongoing project "See", where it extends this inquiry into the conditions that produced the cities we inherit.