ISAM 200 Metadata Collages

Project Title / Name: ISAM 200 Metadata Collages

Client / Institution / Brand: Iziko South African National Museum

Location: Cape Town

Year / Timeline:  April 2025-October 2025

Type of Project: exhibition installation, exhibition design, art installation, 

Summary of the project’s big idea or purpose: Studio Form designed, built, and installed a series of eight collages for the South African National Museum that visually narrate the evolution of metadata across its collections, weaving together archival fragments, fieldwork records, and contemporary materials to reveal how museum knowledge continuously shifts over time.

Studio Form Role : Designer, Production Manager, Project Manager.

Core Services Provided:  Design based off a curators brief of needs, technical drawings, 3D renders, procurement, fabrication oversight, installation, budgeting, scheduling, stakeholder coordination.

Creative & Design Approach

Design Concept / Inspiration: The collages follow the principle of juxtaposition of change, placing archival documents, field sketches, fossil imagery, and contemporary research photographs alongside one another. Rather than staging a single “before and after,” these works capture the continuum of change—small edits, taxonomic revisions, curatorial notes, and reinterpretations—tracing the living quality of metadata as a system that both records and reshapes knowledge.

Unique Features: Each collage in the Metadata-Evolution series is unique because it draws directly from the specific materials, practices, and histories of its collection—Cenozoic, Archaeology, Geology, Entomology, Marine Biology, Exhibitions, Terrestrial Vertebrates, and the Karoo. The sources are not generic but deeply embedded in the collection itself: fossil records, excavation photographs, scientific notebooks, curatorial notes, and exhibition displays. What makes them distinct is the way each collage captures the particular rhythm of change within its field—whether it is the reclassification of species in Terrestrial Vertebrates, the layered excavation notes in Archaeology, the visual shifts in Marine Biology specimen displays, or the field sketches and reconstructions within the Karoo. Each work embodies the evolution of metadata as it happens differently in each discipline, reflecting unique scientific debates, cataloguing methods, and exhibition strategies. Together, the collages form a constellation of approaches, but individually they stand as singular visual stories—condensing the complexity of each collection’s changing records into one richly layered composition. This uniqueness makes each collage not only a document of its field, but also a distinct lens into how museums continuously reinterpret and reframe knowledge.