ARCHIVES: ‘If there’s a crucifixion of everything, there is a resurrection. The soul paints and restores through embroidery,’ Dr Carol Hofmeyr, founder of the Keiskamma Art Project, once said.
Isenheim
The retrospective has the stamp of approval from renowned curator and collector Azu Nwagbogu, who writes that “this retrospective exhibition foregrounds the traditional oral histories and acts as a loudhailer through which to amplify the stories and experiences by and for the people who are otherwise not heard. Through simultaneous narration and documentation, we hope to foster a safe environment to promote healing and sharing to bring people and diverse communities together.
“Mention the Keiskamma tapestries to someone” Hetherington says, “and they will confidently say: ‘I know all about Keiskamma tapestries, I’ve seen the’ or ‘yes, I know all about the Keiskamma tapestries, I’ve seen the altarpiece’. But typically, people have only ever seen the artwork in isolation.” The problem is “there are all these magnificent, iconic crucial pieces sitting in far-flung places all over South Africa and in the world and no one has actually seen them all together.
To help raise funds the embroiderers have made tapestries to sell. The embroiderers were paid for their work while any profit is kept for the retrospective with the actual production going directly back into the Keiskamma Art Project. Rather than viewing the retrospective as a marketing tool, Hetherington sees it as” recognition of a 20-year trajectory”.
The retrospective will be held in the old Women’s Jail and the Men’s Jail on Constitution Hill. The tapestries share a space with and are contextualised by the democratic spirit of the permanent exhibitions already installed in these premises. It seems fitting that to reach these premises one has to walk past the flame of democracy.
One of the Keiskamma Project’s aims is to create a living archive – or an active archive, where the Keiskamma tapestries are built into educational curriculums and students will be encouraged to spend real time with embroiderers instead of engaging at a remove in academic debates.