In 2017, the University of Cape Town (UCT) discovered that it had 11 skeletons in its collection that were unethically obtained between 1925 and 1931. The university started a restitution process to return the skeletal remains to their descendants. This is known as the Sutherland Project, which meant setting up an interdisciplinary team of academics to identify these individuals, nine of whom were San and Khoe people who had worked as farm labourers in Sutherland in the Northern Cape. Kathryn Smith, an associate professor and chair of the Visual Arts Department at Stellenbosch University, was part of this team and created facial reconstructions on eight of the skeletons.

She says it was an opportunity to “restore personhood” to these people, and she continues to do similar work today. An expert in forensic facial imaging, Smith combines scientific knowledge and conceptual, perceptual and technical skills – all fundamental to artistic practice, regardless of the medium – to reconstruct a face on unidentified human remains. “Science guides the process and art completes it,” she says.