The artist commissioned to create a sculpture of Gandhi hopes her statue will inspire all South Africans Anthea Garman Maria Smith Williams, the African-American sculptor who is to do a life-size bronze of Gandhi for the Durban parks department, was attracted to the project because the sculpture had to be of Mohandas Gandhi in his early twenties. “We’re all so in awe of the mahatma, but when he first arrived in South Africa in the 1890s at the age of 23 it was the turning point in his life, the beginning of the trek to become the mahatma,” she says. The parks department advertised for submissions from artists and Smith Williams – intrigued – began to do research for the bid. She read Gandhi’s autobiography and writings from the time, she visited Durban and took photographs of the Gandhi Centenary Park in Chatsworth where the sculpture will be placed. She saw the Pietermaritzburg sculpture of the Mahatma which, she says, “is very good”. The result is a strong sense for her that the young Gandhi is a far more accessible figure, far more understandable than the elder Gandhi in loin cloth, striding ahead with eyes on the horizon. “From his very candid writings I read about his stumblings, his mistakes and the crushing things that happened to him. That age is absolutely fascinating. It was here that he began to make the decisions that set him on the journey to become the Gandhi we all know.” The sculpture that began to form in her mind was one that would speak to South Africans and especially young South Africans. Her Gandhi – which will be seated so as not to tower above the public on an inaccessible plinth – will say “I’m every person, I’m everyman. I’m you,” Smith Williams says. She has minutely researched the dress of the day and Gandhi will appear as the young English gentleman he was educated to be with British suit, tie and quaint 1890s shoes. He also wears a turban and his face is quite strikingly handsome. “When he arrived here he was the image of success, educated and intellectual.” But he was soon to have a series of “shocking experiences” in South Africa – “experiences that can change your life,” says Smith Williams who has found her own five years of living in this country to have been “life-changing”.
The turban is an important detail: when Gandhi first walked into a South African courtroom he was curtly ordered to remove it. “Such a blatant misunderstanding,” Smith Williams says, “in British culture men remove their hats as a sign of respect, in Indian culture men cover their heads as a sign of respect”. So this Gandhi is the human who merges the cultures, who understands both and seeks to help others understand. “I’ve given him his turban back.”
Suresh Singh, parks department manager in charge of the Centenary Park, says it is controversial to want a statue of young Gandhi. “People want to see the frail body of the old man, they think it’s more spiritual,” he says, “but latent in the young Gandhi is the mahatma.”
Smith Williams imagines teachers bringing their students into the park to sit around Gandhi and draw on the contemplative image. She will begin the work on the life-size bronze later this year in her studio at Rhodes University’s fine art department, where she is head of sculpture. It will be positioned in the park in about July 2001. “It’s a lot of work but I’m humbled by having been chosen to do this,” she says. Smith Williams studied fine art at Xavier University in New Orleans and Notre Dame in Indiana. She will be holding an exhibition of her work at the African Feelings Gallery in Sandton in November, based on her five years of living in South Africa.