Pam Guhrs -Carr

Past Exhibitions Current Events Biography Contact Links	Click to enlarge all smaller pictures The elemental materials such as tar and lime, both subject to chemical changes, used in Guhrs’ paintings reflect concepts of transformation and regeneration and also the repetition inherent the initiation teachings.	ANIMALS TAR & LIME TRADE ROUTES FUNKY LANDSCAPES CULTURAL OVERLAYS ROCK ART & INITIATION
“During the research for my MFA I found out that the prehistoric rock paintings in Zambia and Malawi contain the same images that are currently made by the ritual specialists, the women initiation teachers where I live. This inspired me to use the same themes and overlay my own experience on these universal themes of animals and human life”. The notion of the artist as an individual is a quintessentially western one and bore no relation to Guhrs’ local experience, which meant she was forced to question her western art education. Fascinated by the fact that in African art the importance is placed on anonymity and that the process is more important than the product, she embarked on an intensive nine year field research study. While learning more about Kunda women’s initiation art in Luangwa she discovered its relation to rock images in Eastern Zambia These lime and tar paintings are a reverberation of the Zambian rock paintings that inspired them. Guhrs’ artwork aims not for representation but rather acts as a vehicle for channelling the sensations and emotions evoked by the rock art and by the Kunda initiation objects to which they relate. “I am fascinated by how the rock paintings represent complex philosophical concepts that are represented as minimal abstract signs. Much of the initiation teaching to the young girls deals with issues concerning social and spiritual life. It is also about coping with life, loss, death, birth and there is always as element of regenerative transformation - that suffering may result in healing. Animals too are often used to represent different aspects of transformation. These are issues that have always pervaded my own art”, says Guhrs. By learning these images through repetition she aims not to reproduce or to document them but to try to understand them. The process becomes more important than the product. Through the process of repetition she learns, and this becomes part of her in the same way as one would internalise a piece of music, in a mode of reworking these images with closed eyes, in a meditative state, in a manner described by Berggruen, where the inner and outer world, the observer and the thing are merged Using Indian ink and a large brush these images are drawn repeatedly with a tutored hand and then later with eyes closed, until the figure becomes a cipher. Closing the eyes releases the unconscious gesture or the underlying emotive aspects of the form. The replication of painting and repainting simplifies the sign in a Zen-like way until it is personalised. There is an intensity of labour necessary to capture this apparent spontaneity. There is here an attempt to grasp on a level of feeling rather than visual superficiality. These gestural images resembling a type of calligraphy are then enlarged in a manner related to western technical drawing, by a series of grids. The resulting drawings are completed in tar with a large brush. Leopard This is inspired by the 'nsimba' image – a leopard representing dangerous energies surrounding ritual temperatures and pollution beliefs in local initiation teachings. The image is surrounded with fugative knowledge. Its multivalent meanings are concerned with the dangers of ritual temperatures known as mdulo, about fidelity, about ritual pollution and spiritual contamination. It is also about powerful energies, relations between men and women, extramarital affairs, and also simply about not fetching your water from the river in the evening before animals come and drink. The story that is always told around this nsimba image concerns a woman who goes to draw water from the river rather late in the evening. Depending on which version is told, she is either attacked by a leopard or meets her lover. The husband arrives and kills the leopard (or lover) always with an axe. The axe image appears on some of the rock paintings. See Rock Art and Initiation Kanga Jowe These paintings were inspired by the minimal abstract image on the rock paintings that show the girls’ joyous ‘coming out’ ceremony after their initiation ordeals. In order to channel the sensations and emotions evoked by this rock art image, I drew repetitively with a tutored hand, a life drawing of a girl with her arms up. Then with closed eyes I did the same drawings that released the unconscious sensation and emotions evoked by the rock art image. Cyphers A lexicon of various signs. The ideograms have developed from a visual language like a sign language. The meanings and lessons are learned through reiteration and repeated use during the initiations. Some of these are shared, some remain secret. This secrecy has been respected. This is zua na mwezi pambana which is a metaphorical eclipse of the sun and moon denoting male and female characteristics in harmony. The images are also used as didactic tools to inform people about the importance of domestic harmony A common story told about this image is of a man who returns home for lunch and finds his wife missing. He decides to go fishing. While he is away his wife returns; as he is not home she too goes out. The pattern of arriving home, leaving and missing each other is repeated several times. While they are away both husband and wife constantly wander around ‘lost’, they keep asking people whom they encounter where their respective spouse is to be found and they are constantly misdirected. Eventually they arrive home at the same time, thereby forming a single entity in the same way that an eclipse appears to create a unity between the sun and moon. Forest and Bush and Bars There is an interplay between bush and village, nature, spirit and the human world. In the western notion of nature there is an ambivalence which exists about this aspect of danger. If we consider animals to be dangerous we put them behind bars. Spirits are believed to reside in the bush while the village is a place of order and culture.
Past Exhibitions Current Events Biography Contact Links
ANIMALS TAR & LIME TRADE ROUTES FUNKY LANDSCAPES CULTURAL OVERLAYS ROCK ART & INITIATION

	© Pam Guhrs-Carr 2008