3.6 Finding the Hidden Discourses of Oppressed People
3.6.3 The Medium of the Aesthetic offers Art Projects a Locus for Safe Expression and
Ulrich Oslender argues in his article entitled “Revisiting the hidden transcript: oral tradition and black cultural politics in the Colombian Pacific coast region” (2007) that oral traditions be considered as a manifestation of subaltern cultural politics. He draws on James Scott’s conceptual framework on the
42 public and hidden transcripts of social interaction and argues that these poetic forms described as the hidden transcripts challenge dominant “representations of space” and can be used as powerful political tools in the struggle for “cultural and territorial rights” (Oslender 2007:1103). He describes oral tradition as a set of cultural practices that are constantly being reproduced and reconstructed to create the collective memory of a population group through the spoken word. This tradition is neither stable nor fixed and is being developed throughout generations. His study focuses on the transition from hidden to public transcript and argues that this is only possible if a space is created in which “the acts of resistance are imagined, planned and take on shape” (Oslender 2007:1108). He maintains that the emergence on to the public stage of the previously hidden and disguised discourses has an empowering effect on marginalized groups and that existing power relations may be significantly altered through the process.
This study argues that by using the medium of the aesthetic, hidden discourses are given public space which assists in the transition from hidden to public transcript thereby empowering the marginalized group. As in the case of protest and resistance art in South Africa, the aesthetic is given a certain amount of freedom because it falls under the umbrella of culture. Society’s understandings of what constitutes culture are constantly in flux and it therefore creates a platform for the free expression of alternative discourses. Under the guise of culture, ideas that might not be tolerated in mainstream social structures may be explored and expressed. An effective aesthetic medium for the expression of protest is visual art.
An exhibition of visual art may not be regarded as an overt challenge as the conventions involved in the making of the visual image do not have to comply with the prescribed conventions of literary specifications and are not easily interpreted by many. Visual art may challenge injustice but it does not rely on a specific canon of interpretation like literacy and can be interpreted in various ways as visual literacy is a product of art education not readily available to everyone. This ambiguity may camouflage its intentions making them covertly operative.
Groups that meet regularly and which include people with similar concerns, create a site for the emergence of the hidden discourses. An example of such is the Mingle Group which meets in Oxford in England offering support to people with learning disabilities who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual. Members of this group state repeatedly that it is “a place where they felt comfortable, safe, secure and able to be themselves. All spoke of being able to talk freely without fear of judgement” and found a space that was “free from prejudice and abuse” (Elderton 2011:14). Women’s art projects or craft groups appear to offer a similar safe place to express their fears and concerns through the medium of visual art. These art projects offer spaces somewhere out of the reach of the direct influences of the oppressors in their lives and create a space in which to explore the prophetic as women exercise their visionary ability and articulate the longings of their community in an imagined future.
43 Describing the history of the emergence of art projects, Annette Blum in her article entitled “Public Memory, Private Truths: Voices of Women and Visual Narrative in Post-apartheid South Africa” argues that since the end of 1994, South Africans have been dealing with the traumatic legacy of apartheid which has left hidden histories of domination and oppression. She proposes that one of the most significant attempts to create collective memory for South Africans was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which “set up public hearings to offer victims of Apartheid the opportunity to establish historical truth, and give legitimacy and authority to previously silenced voices” (Blum 2011:13). Blum argues for the significance of rural art initiatives in “enabling narrative expansion to the restrictive testimonial practices of the TRC in utilizing a different form of testimony, functioning as ‘public expressions of trauma and memory’” (Blum 2011:14). Whereas the TRC used oral confessions and testimonies to reconstruct public memory, the women in these art initiatives used printing, painting, beadwork and embroidery to give voice to their experiences of violence. Although the intention of the TRC was to restore human and civil dignity to the victims it largely failed to do this for women as the testimonial practices were “inappropriate for expressing the experiences of women during apartheid” as its narrow focus was on “individual physical forms of harm” and it underestimated the dangers for women in public testimony (Blum 2011:17). Researchers and activists argued that a different kind of social intervention was necessary to allow the stories of harm told by women about women to emerge. In response to the need for women’s voices to be heard, Andries Botha, a recognized South African artist who after attending the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, developed a creative methodology as a means “for women’s memory to be recounted and held in trust as part of the memory archive of South Africa”5. The Project that he initiated is called Amazwi Abesifazane – Voices of Women- and has been running for more than a decade. The project ran many workshops in different provinces throughout South Africa in which women were given cloths of various colours and encouraged to use beadwork and embroidery to tell their stories depicting the subject of “A Day I Will Never Forget” (Blum 2011:20). This provided them with the opportunity to give voice to their experiences of trauma and violence under apartheid. These small cloths, each about 10 inches x 12 inches, tell the personal histories of the everyday struggles of women to survive under apartheid. The initiation of this art project created a foundation for art projects and their initiatives as a safe and effective forum for women to tell their stories through art forms such as beadwork and embroidery.
5 Amazwi Abesifazane- Voices of Women Museum; http://amazwi-voicesofwomen.com/about-us; accessed 08/07/2012.
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