Building Community: Impact on Women and Children (Series II)
This exhibition focuses on the impact of gross violations of human rights
under Apartheid against women and children as specifically identified by
the TRC in its two years of community hearings. Given my interests
in issues of relationship and connection I wanted to give voice to
women’s and children’s individual strength and group powerlessness.
The TRC held special hearings to induce women to come forward and tell
their stories. For a variety of socio-cultural reasons women were
(and remain) extremely reluctant to voice their experiences in the
struggle for liberation. Breaking
the Silence and Shall I
Testify? address the efforts of the TRC and the difficulties
faced by women who wanted to come forward and speak out.
Women were both targets and victims of the Apartheid regime as well as
within the society at large. Rape, Target
of the Regime and Detention II
deal directly with human rights violations against women.
Children became involved in the War of Liberation and their organized
resistance to Apartheid provided a significant challenge to the South
African government. June 16th, 1976,
Footsoldiers and Away
With Afrikaans all depict some aspect of the critically
important role children played.
The struggle against Apartheid had many facets and individuals and
groups got caught up in it in different ways and with varying
consequences. There was inter-racial violence, inter and
intra-community violence, political group violence and even
intergenerational violence as children en masse defied their parents and
took the struggle to the township streets. Mothers
of Ten deals with only one story of literally thousands of
victims that I chose for illustrating in this exhibition. Many
assume the killing was all by whites against blacks and vice versa, but
Necklacing shows that much
violence was perpetrated by blacks against blacks of different tribes
and/or political allegiance.
The materials I used to make these pieces are a metaphor for some of the
content of the work. Using mixed media and the process of collage
allowed me to reflect the mélange of cultures and races, the complexity,
layers and diversity of South African society. In conceiving the
works I was drawn to different techniques and materials to convey this
multiplicity of perspectives and aspects of this history. Clay
pieces, all individually made and with their own unique shape, were used
for peoples’ names and other data like events, dates and locations.
They are misshapen and unique like people’s lives; they are fragile and
of the earth and the land. White writing on a black ground is
symbolic of white domination, and removing the paint to create the
words/image is also a process metaphor. The use of a border in many
of the pieces references the boxed or contained existence separating the
races.
Next: View images from Impact on Women and Children (Series II)
