creative responses

I have an abiding memory. When I was seven years old, during the Christmas of 1999, the elders were talking about Judgment Day. In the year 2000, they said, everything worldly would fall and a new spiritual era would begin. This was the verdict of an older generation witnessing their communities being decimated by AIDS-related illnesses. While the world did not end in 2000, in South Africa the disease was ravaging families and leaving scarred communities, overwhelmed by poverty and hunger. What happens when hope and prayer are not enough? It was against this landscape that the Keiskamma Art Project (KAP) was formed.

Through embroidery and textile, these works initiate dialogue on marginalised human experience, touching on social issues that span hundreds of years: South Africa’s history of occupation and resistance; the threat to the natural world of climate change and pollution; gender-based violence and discrimination; and, mirroring the HIV/AIDS pandemic during which the Project came into being, the global health crisis of Covid-19. The artists share stories of personal and community trauma as a way of healing—individually and collectively. Their stitched narratives, which communicate experiences familiar to most black South Africans, offer a message of hope and resilience. Faced with immense and seemingly insurmountable social challenges, the artists have used art, on a monumental scale, to help work through and heal themselves, their communities and wider society. The act of putting together the different pieces of embroidered fabric, making them one, is symbolic of the artists’ collective navigation through shared pain, and their cathartic resolution in works of singular beauty.

I can vividly remember the first time I came across images of their work in a South African art education textbook, while still at school. I was in awe of the rough, tactile energy of the artworks, their dominant line work, rich colour and extraordinary scale. The style suggests a long journey undertaken bravely and determinedly, through often perilous terrain, and the belief that there is joy and meaning to be found in shared creativity.

In 2019, I had the privilege of meeting some of the artists when they were attending an artist residency in Cape Town. I found the experience of meeting them face to face even more overwhelming than I had expected, and was moved to discover that most of the artists are the same age as my late mother. I felt protected and affirmed by them. To hold conversations with them about their work and to hear them speak about their creative process was very poignant for me. It awoke something in my spirit, giving me insight into the way art can be used as a therapeutic tool to work through social issues. I realised at once that artists are an empathetic voice for the millions of beings across the world who are voiceless and disempowered, unable to speak about certain things. I felt reassured that my own artistic journey has value.

It is a privilege to be able to connect with these powerful and accomplished works, in the context of a rich tapestry of conversations about the lived experience of the collective and its material expression in art. The artworks are an inspiring symbol of a community’s determination to come together and use their creativity against agony.