unlimited global alchemy

World Aids Day (1st Dec 2011)

I am delighted that on 1st Dec, World Aids Day my artwork "Ubuntu" will be exhibitied at the opening of Trauma a Group Exhibition at GVart Gallery London.

Ubuntu (Acrylic, chalk, ribbon on purple silk velvet, 180cm x 135cm, 2011)
"I am what I am because of who we all are"
(From a translation offered by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee)

“Ubuntu” narrates the traumatic journey that members of Bambanani (a xhosa word meaning stand together/unite) have engaged in since they were infected with the HIV/Aids virus at the end of the 20th Century.

Until each of them began the first of the free anti retroviral treatment plans commissioned by Médecins Sans Frontières MSF in 2001, these individuals were the forgotten ones of the Khayelitsha Township abandoned by the hospitals and sent home to their shacks to die.

This artwork expresses how the group supported each other to cope with the trauma of their chronic illness and how they dealt with the opportunistic infections that ravaged them, both physically and psychologically, until such time as the treatment was developed.

In the painting Thobani leads the group – all migrants from the Eastern Cape - with dynamic energy, supported by the strength of his crutches - which he now uses as a consequence of the muscular weakness that the virus has inflicted on his body.

This is a complicated narrative with many social and political ramifications, but the members of the group survive as disciples spreading positive messages relating to the HIV/Aids virus.  The trauma will never go away, but nevertheless they are survivors bringing hope and strength to all those they come into contact with.

I take a divergent approach to the subject of trauma, where corporeal impulses ignite my work bringing energy, fragility and rawness to her narrative. Externalizing the invisible world of those living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa I attempt to capture the physical sensations of trauma drawing on my own unseen disability to create a direct emotional connection between subject, artist and viewer. I feel the sensation of velvet when I touch skin, and my frenetic brushwork echoes the caress of skin as it is touched intimately. Threads of ribbon pierce through the surface of the artwork, infiltrating the body’s system and invisibly weakening its defenses.

Nothing can prepare the victim for a positive result, but by focusing and drawing attention to the pandemic it is hoped that in some way awareness is drawn to the ambition that

"There will be an HIV free future generation"

http://www.gvart.co.uk/

Trauma
Group Show
1st December 2011 to 18 February 2012

Tuesday to Friday 11am to 6pm, Saturdays 11am to 4pm
or by appointment 

Robert Devcic (Director)
GVart 49 Chiltern Street London W1U 6LY 020 8408 9800

Posted by Rachel Gadsden, 11:12am 01/12/11