An exhibition of mostly linocut prints celebrating the new Bill of Rights opened in Durban last week. SUZY BELL reports
After trampling over every single clause of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights during the apartheid era, it’s fitting that South Africans can finally express their newly found freedom in art, by celebrating the country’s new Bill of Rights.
In what will go down as the most prestigious local arts gathering of the year, the Images of Human Rights Portfolio opening, Durbanites marked National Human Rights Day at the Durban Art Gallery last week.
The exhibition of beautiful prints, mostly in linocut, was created by artists chosen by regional galleries; they were briefed to create a black and white image of one of the 27 clauses of the new Bill of Rights.
Master printer Jan Jordaan, of the Fine Arts department at Technikon Natal, printed each limited edition of 50 portfolios. Aside from their artistic and historical value, they are very much an art collector’s investment, on sale at R10 000 each. The money raised from the work, together with the sales of catalogues, posters and cards, will go to Amnesty International South Africa for youth education projects.
Said opening speaker Albie Sachs: ‘Artists have a special role, the vision to communicate the 27 new principles for our new society.’
Winner of the nationwide relief print competition was Port Elizabeth print artist Norman Kaplan. His winning work forms the title piece of the portfolio. “The idea was to try and show the coming together of all the race groups in the country, the forging of the rainbow nation, basically to show the forward movement and the march of the people in the new dispensation we have,” Kaplan explained.
Kaplan left the country after the 1976 uprisings. He was working as a designer for South African Associated Newspapers (Saan) at the time. Saan had the crusading Rand Daily Mail in its stable. ‘I was pretty close to witnessing the situation first hand,’ Kaplan said. ‘Black photographers walked into the office all bloodied and in total shock from what they had just seen. I felt ineffectual in South Africa as I had no way of making a direct contribution.’
As a graphic designer and film-maker, Kaplan made many of the posters, illustrations and book covers that are now familiar icons of resistance culture, including Nelson Mandela’s collection No Easy Walk to Freedom. He produced Isitwalandwe, the first political film about apartheid, in 1979. Kaplan also helped establish the Mayibuye Centre at the University of the Western Cape (UWC).
The Images of Human Rights Portfolio is on at the Durban Art Gallery until January 5