HUMANITY: Friend or foe?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, ...”
- Charles Dickens -
Youngblood Africa Art Gallery & Friends of MSF & UCT Surgical Society invited artists to submit their artwork - answering the question: Humanity, friend or foe? I was asked to create an art piece that represents our world of contrasting destruction and healing - images that reveal the hope within the hopelessness. It is on this basis that I created my artwork - a process that took me 45 hours!
Dickens was writing about the age of the French Revolution, but it also describes the world as we find it today, filled with humans with an enormous capacity for both hurt and healing. Surely there is a lot of pain in the world, but one cannot ignore the equal amount of good humanity does, especially the selfless acts that is done in times of suffering. Just like MSF, I aim with my piece to bring abuses and intolerable situations to the public eye.
Suffering in its many forms is a vicious cycle that is continued through each generation. This is why I chose a circle, because it never stops and never begins. It is easy to ignore all the suffering and violence in the world. It becomes a messy pattern, more war, more healing, contained in newspaper articles easily skipped over. In the same way my piece is a messy pattern from far away. It is only when you pay attention that it moves you to inspect what everything really means. The closer you look the more uncomfortable you get. The destruction starts taking shape, and the suffering is revealed intimately.
I deliberately left out any traces of a face, race, or religion. Suffering has no name. It is part of every people group, every person’s life. There is no pointing of fingers in my piece, only the realization that it is happening, and that one can chose to stand and stare, or go do something about it.
Thank you for looking at my work!
