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Past Exhibitions
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This exercise experimented with the various elements that make up the differences between western and African art. One work was a performance art piece in a neighbouring village. Initiation art is more about process than product. With this in mind, Guhrs did an art work, designed to be transient, using panels of different coloured earth.
After a few days this temporary piece was dispersed by the wind. It was built on a clay base, constructed by the initiation teacher in the same way that the ritual clay pieces are formed. Charcoal, red and yellow oxide, earth of the area and ground millet were used - colours and materials of the initiations. Some of these materials are considered to have potent energy. The text written in charcoal gave a western element to the work. It was a poem on ancestral identity written by Brad Strickland The second piece was an entire roll of canvas (a traditional western art support, in juxtaposition to the clay support in the first piece) primed with earth of the area and painted with ancestral initiation symbols (also found in Zambian rock art) by the local initiation teacher.
Using the contemporary initiation symbols these remembered images were painted by Eneria Njovu a prominent initiation teacher who also led Guhrs’ daughters through their initiation |
ANIMALS
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© Pam Guhrs-Carr 2008 |
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