Ruth's retrospective art exhibition 'Unravelling' has been on at the Lechwe Trust Art Gallery in Lusaka, Zambia, from 15th. October to 16th. November. It has been very well received, with several hundred visitors and well over half of the works sold.
Here's a review of the exhibition which will be appearing shortly:-
Ruth
is heavy.
If you have
milled around Zambia’s art and history circles, you may know of her. She is a
repository.
I first
encountered Ruth as I was researching a project. I find I often come across her
archive of written musings whenever I do some in-depth research on Zambian art.
Frankly, I thought she was dead.
Her latest
show, the first in decade is vulnerable and raw, and not for the faint of
heart. ‘Unravelling’ skips over the niceties and goes straight for the jugular,
disrupting and upending what Zambian art could be on its head as she returns to
where art really began for her. Gone are the vibrant colours reminiscent of
chitenge fabric and colourful representations of tradition. Amid a sea of
black, white and grey, colour shines through, but the perfunctory introduction
of colour to this exhibition is not without intention, there is a formula to
it. None of Ruth’s work
made me happy, and therein lies my own contradiction of my own divided
perceptions of art. The art we view, is informed by the times.
Ruth Hartley
has been part of Southern Africa’s fabric since her birth in Harare, Zimbabwe
in 1943, she has lived and created art between Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa
and Europe. She studied art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town
and later received her MA in Women’s Studies from Anglia Ruskin University in
1999. She moved to Zambia in 1972 and ran Mpapa Gallery alongside Lechwe Trust
Gallery founder Cynthia Zukas for ten years from 1984 to 1994. These years,
often considered the golden age of Zambian art, were instrumental in helping to
direct the future of Ruth’s approach to her art practice.
As with most
artists, Ruth’s works are informed by the times, except Ruth has always
gravitated to the political, vulnerable and unvoiced. One of her earlier works,
‘Chikumbi Bombings, 1979’, depicts the bombing of Chikumbi in the late 1970s,
when during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, when Ian Smith deployed Rhodesian
forces near Chisamba. At first glance, the colours are bright and vibrant.
Crimson red, velvet greens and deep yellows create an orderly, almost practiced
composition. On closer inspection, these are bodies in various positions of
prostration and despair beneath the shade of a tree crowned with red and gold
flowers. The flowers are flaming tongues of fire. There are buildings aflame.
The bodies are not lounging, they are those of the deceased and those who mourn
them, caught in the crossfire. Despite its raw messaging, the image fulfills
the criterion of an aesthetic image. Neatly ‘coloured within the lines’, a
dirge disguised as a tableau. In this image, is Ruth still finding her way? Not
yet vulnerable, not yet come to meet herself?
The
Unravelling brings 150 out of 245 paintings, sketches and installations out of
hiding. Sana Ginwalla, curator, archivist and founder of the Everyday Lusaka
Gallery in Lusaka, Zambia, curates what we see, and how and when we see it. We
approach ‘Chikumbi Bombings’ before the abrupt steeliness of the ‘Migration 1’
and ‘Migration 2’ series enters our periphery and keeps our attention.
Ginwalla’s choice of juxtaposition is not without intention. The spectrum of
colours flows throughout the exhibition. The first series, ‘The True History of
My Past’ is drenched in vibrant colour, a collection of whimsical, almost crude
sketches, to stark black and white sketches depicting the realities of Zambia’s
ongoing relationship with drought and climate change, before turning a corner
to a piece from her ‘Apartheid Series’, drenched in blood-red and created in
the Mbile International Artist’s workshop addressing apartheid and its
conclusion in South Africa. The coffins at the bottom of the painting are a
precursor to the cold, dark, grey steel of iron, metal and war, shot with red
for blood, fire and restriction in the ‘Migration Series’, chronicling the
plights of Syrian refugees. These later works, in contrast to ‘Chikumbi
Bombings’, reveal a more honest stroke that demonstrates Ruth’s anguish,
loneliness, pent-up emotion and empathy for human life.
What strikes
me about Unravelling, is the linework. It is bold, intimidating and purposeful.
Her strokes remind me of the pains of labour. This work is birthed through the
pain and adversity of her life, and this form of pain is raw and visible in
nearly every piece. Forced into political exile after freeing apartheid South
Africa for having a interracial relationship and subsequently experience
financial and emotional abuse in her first marriage, followed by a divorce that
disrupted her family life and that of her children, Ruth bears down in
Unravelling and enters the second stage of labour.
From here,
the curation draws into the ‘heart’ of the exhibition, Ruth’s heart, where we
meet her most intimate and vulnerable self. So far, we have experienced her
from the outside, as ‘WWW Woman’, spun out of hessian and unravelling over the
years and we have experienced her depictions of the struggles of others, Syrian
refugees losing their lives escaping wars in tube boats and the effects of
drought. In the heart, Ruth depicts herself in the flesh. We find her body
discarded on the floor, her skin flayed and spread out like a cattle hide
drying, to reveal…nothing. We walk all over and past her body like she means
nothing, just a discarded object of no importance. She is unsettling.
Above her
discarded remains, a mythical creature, ‘The True History of My Body’, with
multiple eyes escaping its head and five arms clutches various objects
associates with her life, travel, motherhood, relationships, art, an impaled
ankle from many years ago and a hole in her belly: a miscarried pregnancy. Her
heart is arranged with what she loves and what she has lost. Pieces of a
disintegrating door in ‘The Past Future Tree’ bears the disintegrating
portraits of her family tree, as her ancestors fade away, so do the
photographs, so do the salvaged remains of a discarded door. A piece, ‘Life’s
Journey Making Roads’ hangs in a corner. It is a collection of debris collected
with her husband during a long road trip depicting the things we pick up along
the way that become a part of us. In the ‘Love ‘series, Ruth also confronts
heartbreak, grief and those she holds dear with a sobering collection of
sketches titled ‘Love’. There is not much to love as the collection is
unsettling, not at all betraying the imagery we have come to associate with the
verb. In ‘Love’, the artist appears haunted and in anguish, mirroring our own
struggles with the implications of loving, being in love and receiving love.
The
walkthrough ends with a 5-panel display titled ‘RA1TZ’. It depicts a recreation
of one of the world’s most chilling images, a man falling from the World Trade
Centre during its collapse on 9/11. Unravelling leaves behind a bitter taste.
It steps outside the boundaries of what art should be or could be. Viewing the
exhibition is not a pleasant experience, Ruth takes the worst of society and
holds a mirror back to it: war, violence, geopolitics, death. Herself an
advocate for political and social change, she once considered herself a
Marxist, and has been involved in the Vietnam War protests, Women’s Rights
Movements, a member of the ANC Youth Wing during her time in South Africa.
