Review of the week
Matthew Krouse
Cross-cultural art concepts don’t always work. Take Japanese Kabuki theatre – three decades ago America’s high-performance hippies borrowed elements from that archaic, ritualised tradition. Anticipating the global age, many hailed the invention, now only remembered as a pretentious fad.
Two decades later, artists confronting the Aids pandemic are finding meaning in a cultural act cutting across equally removed divides.
The paper prayers campaign is an American invention with Japanese origins that has blossomed in South Africa. Inspired by the Japanese custom of offering decorated strips of paper to loved ones in times of ill health, Bostonian artist Howard Yezerski commissioned such dedications to those living with HIV in the mid-Eighties. Small anonymous artworks were exhibited, then auctioned to raise money in a time when state funds were scarce.
What began as an act of solidarity with stricken American artists has, in our country, become an officially funded awareness campaign incorporating methods of creative empowerment.
The campaign was initiated by the Johannesburg Art Gallery on a shoestring budget in 1995. In following years it grew steadily, benefiting from funds donated by NGOs. This World Aids Day, on December 1, sees the culmination of activities by both regional and city-based art incentives that have been churning out the little artworks over the preceding months.
By Tuesday thousands of paper prayers will have found their way to public places where people will have a chance to obtain them for nominal donations. These will go to institutions supporting people with HIV, and are expected to raise in excess of R20 000. While this amount is small when compared to the R320 000 of funding given by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, it is the level of awareness that the campaign has inspired that counts most.
At the campaign’s launch in August, deputy minister Bridgette Mabandla referred to its “multi-faceted and participative approach to the HIV/Aids issue”. This has included the production of a 30-page workbook to be used in facilitating the making of the paper prayers. The book includes information about HIV, as well as group exercises that tackle issues related to the spread of the disease.
Rudimentary printmaking is a skill that enjoys a special place on the African continent. As a means of making umpteen works from a single source it has benefitted many – from collectives mass-producing fabric to those who have created rare masterpieces, like the internationally acclaimed lino-cutter Azaria Mabatha.
Printmaking workshops have already taken place in all nine provinces – from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga to Kuruman in the Northern Cape, where activities have centred around the Moffat Mission’s historical press. Participants have ranged from city- based artists, musicians and clergymen, to rural schoolgoers and members of women’s collectives. All have included lessons in papermaking. Using discarded materials, like banana skins and shredded computer paper, recycled strips have been provided for the thousands of entirely handmade paper prayers.
In content, the anonymous works all tackle the complex subject of Aids from unexpected angles. Given our country’s history of propagandising the politics of bread and butter issues one would expect a couple of fists and chains to emerge, but it has not been the case. If there are hands, they tend to be outstretched. While images of condoms and death are present, the illustrations – many of which are in stark black and white – have great surrealistic appeal.
Some depict skeletons, perhaps projecting an unnecessary fear of people living with HIV. Others contain dangerous-looking genitalia and pregnant women, while images of nature serve as obvious symbols of life.
On the whole they’re bizarre and brash, crudely-hewn tombstones for the departed and statements of concern for those who are battling to stay alive. They embody feelings ranging from solidarity to resentment – responses that gain greater poignance when one considers that some of the artists are positive, themselves.
Paper Prayers can be found at select galleries and will be displayed at World Aids Day Events countrywide. For information about where you can pick them up in your area call Kim Berman of the Artists Proof Studio on (011) 492- 1278