Twin
Arts for the twin arts of music & dance
"THE AIDS WALL"
a review by Chris Hamblin, public art event collaboration coordinated by Joyce Kohl unveiled 13th Dec 2000 National Gallery. See response by Pip Curling of National Gallery
"Unfortunately the AIDS Wall
is such a disappointment, full of negative
images and stereotyped prejudices that reinforce stigma and shame rather
than emphasising hope and compassion. A memorial like this was such a good
idea and long overdue in Zimbabwe, so I am sorry that it does not have
more encouraging messages, and does not give pride to people living with
HIV." Farai & Sunanda (see
SAfAIDS Press
Release in Fine Arts Section)
The comment above arrived at Arts Event
List some hours after the unveiling ceremony of the "Aids Wall"
in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery Harare on Wed 13th December.
My impressions of this well-intentioned project were tempered with some reservations.
The public found it difficult to be overtly enthusiastic about this piece
of public art.
The
'Aids Wall' is a collaborative work and was co-ordinated by visiting Fulbright
Scholar Joyce Kohl, (a ceramic artist ? I have no press release). At the unveiling,
we did not see a healing event that brought the suffering community together,
nor I believe has it made a harmonious aesthetic contribution to the grounds
of the National Gallery. In the face of the work of the Aids Quilt Movement,
this project is artistically naive and symbolically questionable since the
whole concept has problematic double meanings.
What
qualities does a quilt evoke? A warm covering, a resting-place, tapestry of
life, patches that sum up an individual's life, something that can be carried,
a wrapping, transient cloth, a shroud and a patchwork of memories enshrined.
What
do we associate with tiled rooms & structures? Perhaps the classical bathroom,
Butchery, Toilet, Hospital, subway, slab, wall, floor, fireplace, Mortuary,
Mausoleum, in general coldness, all quite different from the warm associations
with quilts.
The
tiled wall structure of the Aids Wall reminded many people of a decorated
men's toilet …. As one person said to me "it looks like a pissoir!"
The Aids Wall is a brick built zigzag of right-angled tiled walls, the height of a small building that the spectator walks around. Apart from and to one side, is a rectangular bench box also tiled, painted with graffitti like statements.
Statements like "with condoms you could live an extra 50+ years, so use them now!!", "be faithful to one partner because aids has no cure" The statements & designs on the bench box tiles lack refinement, perhaps over fired they look tarnished and yellowed.
Top surface of the bench/box
Painters from Ros Byrne Pottery Studio, Ruwa, did the tile-paintings that cover the main wall structure. These men & women have a technical skill and decorative consistency that is recognised internationally for ceramics. Children from Streets Ahead, Emerald Hill and Shanga DzeVana Trust made the bench box tiles. The stark contrast of quality between the two parts of this work is disappointing. The monochrome naivety of the bench tiles contrasts strongly with the sophisticated colourful, flowery, moralistic illustrations of the ceramic tile artists. These images are literal illustrations on a variety of the usual stereotyped informative themes of how you get AIDS, containing images of the human condition of rural and city folk at play and in sickness, mourning and death. Paintings that are highly detailed and so a bit difficult to see from a short distance away. By comparison, one is reminded of the simple and broader approach of the Weya Community who produce cloth wall hangings, which do read well at a distance.
Children from Emerald Hill Children's Home
Comparisons with "The Aids Memorial Quilt" highlight many of the problems with the Aids Wall. http://www.aidsquilt.com The Aids Quilt first appeared in USA 1987 and has since been shown in 2,000 U.S. cities. It has grown so large it now has to be stored in a warehouse, moved by 10 train cars and unfolded by 1,000 people. When unfurled in '96 it stretched for nearly a mile along the National Mall in Washington. More than 2 million people crowded into Washington over a weekend to catch a glimpse of the symbolic blanket which, was made up of 38,000 panels, each commemorating at least one person who had died from the disease. The South African AIDS Memorial Quilt began in 1989 in Cape Town by Carroll Jacobs, of the Western Cape ATICC. In addition to holding quilting bees for panel makers, they have developed training materials and workshops to help spread awareness about the disease. http://www.aidsquilt.org/Newsite/SAQuilt1.htm
It is clear from this, that the Aids
Quilt is a movement that has been active internationally since the late '80's.
The laying out of the Aids Quilt have produced monumental events drawing the
community together allowing a public statement of their grief and an artistic
expression of their feelings of loss for their loved ones. The scale of these
events promote an overwhelming sense of thousands of different valued people
whose lives had been cut short by an illness that was not understood or treatable
by the best of modern science.
An
important aspect of the Aids Quilt Projects is that artists have participated
in collaboration with members of the public to enable them to produce individual
quilts of a high artistic merit that form a part of the whole. We are not
seeing evidence of this kind of educative artistic collaboration in the Aids
Wall.
For
us in Zimbabwe, the "Aids Wall" is probably important as a statement
that says that we have only reached the wall stage of our caring when our
sufferers desperately need the quilts of tenderness.
By association I found myself thinking of another piece of ceramic art, Marcel Duchamp's 'Fontaine' (1917), which is one of a series of 'ready mades' appointed as works of Art by the artist. Coincidentally 'Fontaine' is a mass produced porcelain "urinal" roughly signed R Mutt. A copy of the original is on view in the Tate Modern in London, as part of the large informative display about Duchamp's life & creative work. http://www.tate.org.uk/
In 1917 Duchamp heralded modern art movements
such as Event Art (later on Performance Art) & Conceptual Art. In the
first the artist becomes the artwork, sometimes living in the gallery, sometimes
showing the documenting of a process or engaging in discussion with visitors
& viewers. In Conceptual Art the artist hints at the nature of art by
reference of the most minimal philosophical/conceptual means.
In
the 1960's &70's these movements led on to a general interest by artists
in making artworks by actions within society, since something had to be going
on before it could be discussed or documented. Artists like Joseph Beuys in
Germany, John Latham and the Artist's Placement Group in UK and groups such
as the Experiment in Art & Technology Art in USA did much to encourage
works of this sort. Each of these proposed and developed theories of universal
creativity and staged events and placements that involved artists participating
in communities in specific community based projects. Many of these have been
well funded and documented in Europe & America.
Some
of you will have seen pictures of the monumental UK sculpture 'The Angel of
the North', a massive structure visible from 20 miles away. (A part of the
'Year of the Artist' by the UK Arts Council, staged in all sorts of different
media all over UK developed from residencies). It is an impressive and imposing
structure, it also has some considerable aesthetic merit close up or at a
distance. http://www.yearoftheartist.com/
Unveiled in a spirit of commemoration,
proclaimed as a work for "Healing the Community", the 'Aids Wall'
was a product of the very best of intentions. It is a commemoration of our
society's naivety in coming to terms with an enormous crisis, a wall that
we can not afford to pull down, so, how can we now use it?
The
challenge to local artists from the Aids Wall is can they now come up with
something more significant and sensitive? We all know that more money needs
to be put into provisions for Health Care & Education in Zimbabwe, it
is also apparent from this project that more money needs to be put into cultivation
of the Arts and the role played by the arts in developing & healing the
community.
By Chris Hamblin
Other links and info on about the Aids Wall on this site:
Comment from Pip Curling the Curator of the National Gallery
Comment from Joyce Kohl artist & the coordinator of the project
The two comments above were written in response to the article above published in in Arts Event Listing 18th Dec 2000
Comment from SAfAIDS the Southern African AIDS Information Dissemination Service