I was delighted to receive the opportunity to go to South Africa, I set off in early August not knowing quite what to expect but open to the idea of travel as inspiration and insight. From the very beginning it was a journey of amazing people, learning, curious art collections, new perspectives, and exciting new insights. There were at times unplanned challenges that taught me something about my own perspectives and how I navigate fear. I witnessed extreme situations that changed some of my assumptions, I made some drawings and came back with plans and ideas for plenty more.
Stepping away began with a well-organised schedule thanks to CHR Director Heidi Grunebaum and the team at the University of the Western Cape--a flight from Dublin to Doha and on to Cape Town seemed long but necessary. The inflight entertainment included a ‘flight screen’ that mapped our movement across the geography of Africa, it was visually fascinating and a little perplexing to think I was floating above that great continent. I zoomed in close picturing dirt roads, basic transport and the tough physical labour of life, way down there. Then zooming back out again I saw Lake Victoria. A vast area of water that became the landing strip for the ‘flying boats’ my father worked on at the end of the Second World War. Aeronautical engineering that developed in Belfast opened up the vast continent of Africa, but for what? Further exploration and imperial plunder?
Tired of urging the little plane symbol forward and content to believe we were swiftly skipping across borders, great deserts, and mountains, I read for a while. A sudden unexplainable drop in the aircraft shot fear across the rows of seats. An air hostess ran to her seat in front of us and buckled in. I don’t remember any passenger information announcements but I did register the expression on her face. The angle of the aisle was now clearly pointing downwards-- all was not well, but no one said anything. I quickly returned to sentences on the page that occupied my mind sufficiently to stay calm, with the vague mantra ‘I am not going there’. I knew at some level there was danger but refused to allow my imagination to reconnect with the flight screen images of mountainscapes and harsh terrain below. I stayed with the words on the page (thank you Paul Lynch - Prophet Song) and only looked up when I heard the sirens and saw flashing blue and red lights of fire engines on either side of the plane as we landed in Basra. What ensued was a truly ‘international moment’ of people sharing experiences, thoughts and relief all witnessed by multiple bewildered Iraqi men in military attire with large dark moustaches. I have a little magnet stuck to my fridge door to remind me a good novel is such a blessing.
Cape Town is incredibly beautiful and even in the winter twilight the mountains are supreme, cradling the city as it runs into the ocean. The first week was Winter School; I attended and contributed to a fascinating array of thoughts and experiences on Borders. Researchers from all over the continent gathered, offering rich insights into the African experience. Impressive indefatigable thinkers, young and old, presented, taking us on imaginative journeys beyond destruction and trauma. It was humbling to see first-hand the challenges being faced in this post-apartheid city. Ukwanda Puppetry artists, currently in residence at CHR, were building from cardboard ‘The Herd project’--huge animal puppets planning to march 20,000km from central Africa to Svalbard, a world-first arts intervention on climate change.
Having set up a basic drawing space in a room with a glorious view of the mountains and several well-behaved puppets to keep me company, I began to discover my new environment. I met wonderful, interesting people and visited museums and galleries that gave me a new understanding of where I was and the lived experience of local residents. The magnificent architecture of the Museum of Contemporary African Art, conjured out of former grain silos at the dock, is truly visionary and made me think of the potential for a similar location in Dublin.
I also visited Athlone, not the quaint town at the centre of Ireland but a district of Cape Town loaded with political and cultural history. I was fascinated to know more about the Earl of Athlone and the Anglo-Irish links, and visually inspired by the theatrical dress covering up all the powerful lies and delusion at the heart of the colonial drama. There are paintings and possibilities here to keep me well-occupied for at least a year.
South Africa and Ireland share experiences of injustice, colonialism and ‘freedom movements’. Today’s paradigm shift focuses on the ‘ideals of peace’ and how society reconstructs after the disruptions of war. What possibilities might art offer in societies still living in the shadows of prejudice and violence? I visited artists in Cape Town and Johannesburg negotiating these challenges. I met with the leading activist and lawyer Albie Sachs--what a privilege to hear him talk about art as “essential energy” encouraging us to dream of building better more equal sustainable societies.
I visited ‘The Centre for the Less Good Idea’ in Johannesburg, met with artist William Kentridge, attended workshops and returned to Ireland thoroughly inspired by what I experienced at those workshops-- more convinced than ever that art has a valuable role in how we imagine ourselves into better, more liveable societies. I can only suggest that an artist residency between Ireland and South Africa might be a very worthwhile initiative.
I travelled with a notebook, a camera and my curiosity, and packed an enormous amount into the four busy weeks in South Africa. A huge thank you to all the people at the University of Western Cape and Trinity Long Room Hub for allowing me to take my journey and looking after me so well. There are conversations and encounters that I am still processing, several weeks after my return to Ireland.
The Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair emerges out of a longstanding collaboration between the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at UWC and the Trinity Long Room Hub that has focused on colonialism, partition, postcoloniality and race. Relationships and networks forged through these institutions’ fellowship programmes have laid the groundwork for the establishment of this research chair.