69 In response to this situation in Hamburg, Carol Hofmeyer, who trained as a medical doctor began working in rural clinics in 2002. She met and collaborated with Eunice Mangwane known as “Mama AIDS” in Hamburg and its surrounds. She is a widow and AIDS counselor with family members who suffer with HIV/AIDS. In 2004, before the government retro-virals were available, Hofmeyer sourced them privately in an effort to distribute them to those in most need. In 2005, Hofmeyer set about finding a locale for a hospice which met with opposition but was eventually founded in the centre of town and is known as the Umtha Welanga (“Rays of Sun”) Treatment Centre. The anti-retrovirals only became available to Hamburg in 2005.
5.3.6 Summary
This section described the factors of disadvantage that the members of the Keiskamma Art Project inherited with the impact of apartheid and its legacy of poverty, its rural location and the economic disadvantage and educational limitations which its location imposed, the role of gender in rural Xhosa communities and the HIV/AIDS situation.
These factors contributed to the overall impoverishment of Hamburg and the Keiskamma Art Project, an arts initiative with an interest in HIV/AIDS education, was initiated to empower women in the hopes of creating an income generating activity.
70 Art Project (KAP) was initiated by Dr Carol Hofmeyer (nee Baker). After settling in Hamburg, she was
“struck by the scope of poverty in the region and the plight of women who found themselves unable to support their children” and recognized the potential for an art initiative as a tool to foster hope, health and self respect amongst local people with the purpose of generating regular income for the local community (Schmahmann 2010:35). Hofmeyer was influenced by the Paper Prayers project, where she had been a trainer prior to settling in Hamburg. It was organized by the Art Proof Studio in Johannesburg where embroidery was used to engage with the topic of HIV and she undoubtedly thought to use this model to promote AIDS awareness. She chose to implement its intentions through the Project for “participants to visualize their newly acquired understanding of the disease” and to “articulate anxieties about the disease that they felt unable to express in everyday discourse” (Schmahmann 2010:39). It was out of a background of fine art and activism that the Keiskamma Art Project was initiated.
Hofmeyer began by teaching local women to crochet plastic bags into hats and placemats but soon realized that these items had limited marketable potential and decided to try needlework instead. Jan Chalmers and Jacky Jezewski, who were friends of Hofmeyer, assisted her in helping to get the Art Project up and running through the introduction of embroidery techniques to approximately thirty women.”24 Hofmeyer recognized that there was a history of needlework in the region in which an appliqué technique with beading, buttons and material on leather was “common among isiXhosa speakers” and is documented from the arrival of the first Europeans. This gave the medium of embroidery a feeling of “historical relevance” (Schmahmann 2010: 37). In the search for a greater historical and cultural connection for the project Hofmeyer consulted local historian Des Kopke who identified cattle as a motif to be explored. The cattle killings of the isiXhosa, prompted by the prophetess Nongqawuse’s vision, which had happened around the time of the establishment of Hamburg, interested Hofmeyer and gave the project its early impetus which was seen in the individual embroideries of cattle and one of the first group artworks, the Keiskamma Tapestry.
When the Project first began in 2000, the participants questioned its sustainability and saw it as “short- term jobbing” (Schmahmann 2010: 37). The term ‘jobbing’ is a local term which refers to temporary work. Despite the skepticism around its sustainability, the Project currently has about 130 members from Hamburg and the neighbouring villages of Bodium and Ntilini. It employs approximately twelve people in management positions who receive a monthly salary and others receive a salary when working in groups on a large scale project or from commissions in the studios which are situated in Hamburg,
24 The Creation Altarpiece Exhibition 2007.
71 Bodium and Ntlini. This means that women can work at home on small items while taking care of their domestic chores and can embroider at night when their families have been taken care of.
As the project progressed it focused primarily on the collective production of large works and the participants were encouraged to contribute their “input in the development of subject matter and designs.”25 The project works with the history and stories of people and its intention was “to make embroidered works with meaning for these women.”26 Later, artists emerged through the Project and this forum offered them the opportunity to communicate their art to the rest of South Africa and the world.
The Project sponsored four people, two men and two women, the opportunity to have formal art training through a three-year diploma in Fine Art at Walter Sisulu University of Technology in East London. The women, Nokupiwa Gedze and Nomfusi Nkani and the men, Cebo Mvubu and Kwanele Ganto all graduated in 2006 and now couple their work with management duties and drawing.
The Keiskamma Art Project falls under the umbrella of the Keiskamma Trust, founded by Hofmeyer in 2001, which began as an NGO (non-governmental organization) and involved about fifty members of the local Xhosa community. The Trust has a board of trustees and a management team that oversees three areas of focus: arts and culture, early childhood and youth development, and health and livelihood development. Today, the Keiskamma Trust seeks to promote “health and hope through art, music, HIV/
AIDS treatment, poverty alleviation projects and education initiatives.”27 It incorporates the Keiskamma Art Project, the Keiskamma Aids Treatment Program and the Umtha Welang HIV and AIDS Treatment Centre, the Keiskamma Gardening Project, the Keiskamma Heritage Initiative and other social development programs in which local children are enriched through environmental education, bird watching, music, capoeira (a Brazilian fighting style), techniques of growing vegetables, museum and cultural visits and a bursary fund. All these different subsidiaries have contributed to the overall well being of the community.
The main studio and shop is situated on property acquired for the project which overlooks the mouth of the Keiskamma River and provides a space for the production of commissioned and large scale works, a venue for workshops and talks which include weekly support groups for those living with HIV and a place of work for the many members of the project who arrive daily to embroider. The shop sells embroidered cushion covers, bags, beadwork items and greeting cards. The beadwork items come from
25 The Creation Altarpiece Exhibition 2007.
26 The Creation Altarpiece Exhibition 2007.
27 The Keiskamma Art Trust; www.keiskamma.org; accessed 12/08/ 2011.
72 the beadwork group headed by Caroline Nyongo in Ntlini and the greeting cards in linocut from the second studio in Hamburg which Mvubu and Ganto manage. It also markets these products through different retailers who specialize in arts and crafts in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town as well as smaller locations that specialize in tourism. The Keiskamma Art Project provided rich research material for a case study.