HAVE A LITTLE FAITH
I’ve been a compulsive writer for as long as I can remember and gather quotes and objects with words inscribed on it as magpies gather shiny things. My business diary is an unholy mess with clippings and quotes obliterate the appointment altogether.
Neil Gaiman’s in his short story collection “Fragile Things” wrote
“Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks.”
These twenty six letters and the reconfiguration of it into different sequences recorded the history of the English speaking world since time immemorial, obviously with many morphs and changes in syntax. A simple sentence can change history, like the “I had a Dream” sentence of Martin Luther King.
I’ve been intrigued by the work of graffiti artists and their role in society for some time and have written a number of blog posts about the subject with some negative comments. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Cynthia Rose of the Melville Sector Crime Forum stating that I, through my sympathetic view on street art, am advocating tagging in the suburbs. This saddens me. Tagging is part of the graffiti culture I don’t support or understand, what I do support is the artistry in creating an intricate piece in a public space which often make a social statement of the environment we live in.
I dip in and out of the graffiti world, as I dip in and out of the problems and issues of inner city living and the regeneration of the CBD. There are sub-cultures, all kinds of nuances and problems that I don’t understand. I don’t profess to be an expert on graffiti or urban regeneration. I can only call it as I see it and learn as I go along.
What I try not to do is to summarily dismiss the views and creative expression of others by labeling it as offensive, criminal and of no value because I don’t understand or agree with it.
There are certain creatives in the world of graffiti that has made a profound impression on me. They are highly intelligent and talented people who use street art as a medium of expression. One of these is Faith47 who I briefly met at an exhibition at Pressure Control Projects Grey Scale gallery in Braamfontein a couple of months ago.
She doesn’t look like the archetype graffiti hooligan whose work many summarily view as defacement and vandalism. She’s deeply involved in social issues working with Ricky Lee Gordon and Write on Africa at times in community development projects and has exhibited and worked all over the world - from China to South America.
Faith did a series of murals based on the 1955 freedom charter. For me, as a lover of the written word and whore of the visuals, it makes a profound statement about South African society and how the basic human rights of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised are still sadly discounted nearly two decades after democratic rule.
Rowan Pybus, with Faith47, produced this extremely powerful video that hits me squarely in the gut each time I look at it. I am tired of trying to convince people that street art has a positive role to play in society. Let Faith and Rowans production speak for itself.