APARTHEID, SOUTH AFRICA, PALESTINE, HAMAS AND MY PAINTING

APARTHEID, SOUTH AFRICA, PALESTINE, HAMAS AND MY PAINTING.

 

 

I made this painting in April 1994 as a participant in the Mbile International Artists Workshop in Zambia.

It was the same time as the first democratic elections in South Africa which was where my heart was.

This is the largest of 3 paintings I called the 'South African series'. One was called 'Exile', one called 'Freedom Fighters' and this one I called 'Apartheid'.

The painting represents the evils of apartheid as I saw it and experienced it in the 1960s.

The blood-stained and damaged landscape is fenced with barbed wire and empty of people except for those who wait without hope by the roadside.

The panels on the left and right are about prisons. Those that incarcerate prisoners as well as those that imprison people's minds and bodies with fear, bigotry, censorship, racial and sexual discrimination.

Along the top are symbols of power and war. Among them are modern bombs and ancient spears, raised fists, crowns, masks of fear and superstition. As well as the white Nationalists, I chose these symbols to represent leaders of the Bantustans who used tribalism and ignorance to oppress their own people.

At the bottom of the painting are coffins symbolising those who died to end apartheid. They include Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists and others.

My painting could almost be about Palestine if I made some changes.

The fenced and bloody landscape would have to be full of suffering people. The prisons would still be there. I would however, include Hamas in the top panel as an oppressor of the people, along the Netanyahu government and along with all religious fundamentalists. At the bottom there would still be the same coffins – Muslim, Christian and Jewish and atheist. They would not be those of Freedom Fighters or heroes. The coffins would be of the victims of terrorism and fundamentalism – all those who have died in the last 4 weeks. I would include suicide bombers as victims but not heroes. The French children and Rabbi, the old lady Mrs Bloch, killed by Idi Amin at Entebbe. the King David hotel victims, the Palestinians – I could go back forever.

Instead I will say STOP NOW!

I would not choose to make a painting about Palestine as I am not a Palestinian. I might make a painting about how I would feel about Palestine and Israel.

 

 

I made an installation about the war in the Balkans in the 1990's. I showed an English tea table covered with a fabric on which were printed images from British newspapers of the ethnic cleansing. The tea cups and teapot were filled with blood. Next to them rested a copy of the War poems of Wilfred Owen and a daily paper. Ii is called 'Grantchester ten-to-three' after the poem by Rupert Brooke.

If I was to make a painting today about Palestine this is what I would have to try to show and express - one of my children is half-Muslim, the others are half-Jewish and that makes them all vulnerable to hate and race crimes and death threats. How can I protect them?

I ask you what you think I should put into my art today?

The ANC gave all South Africans a Freedom Charter – social justice without racism or sexism – rights for everybody regardless of religion and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Hamas has not and will not give the Palestinians a Freedom Charter.

It expects that they will prefer to die and not to live.

Whatever you feel about Israel and Palestine, please unite against anti-Semitism and racism of any sort.