Soul Containers
multi media installation, Gallery Delta, Harare, Zimbabwe
“… we are especially vulnerable to ideological and/or technological systems that promise containment for our vulnerable selves.”
– Joyce Nelson, The Perfect Machine: Between, The Lines Press, 1989
This installation was exhibited in Harare in September, l990. It occupied two rooms, and it was site specific. The first room of the installation was bisected by two 5×7 foot pages of an open ‘book’—made from masonite and 2x4s—with graphs painted on them, representing quantitative information. The ‘pages’ were placed in the centre of the room, dividing the space diagonally. They were lit with spots from the front only, casting the corner behind in shadow. In this corner there were two back-lit black and white photographs. The images were taken in the Harare city center and are details of women working.
Top left: Close-up of Soul Container;
Bottom: Rift , mixed media: computer print-out paper with statistics, black and white photograph, acrylic paint on java fabric
The adjoining room contained five wall works. One of the works is on untreated, stretched canvas, and the other four are on printed fabric on stretchers. The fabric is manufactured in Zimbabwe and is distinctive, and renowned, in the region. A metre and a half length of this fabric wrapped around and tucked in at the waist is called a “zambia,” and it is the standard dress of women in Zimbabwe. To give a “zambia” as a gift is a sign of respect. I chose to use this fabric to locate the work, and as a ground from which to explore issues relating to a particular place, and to make connections to broader issues. I used paint to alter/transform/reinterpret the original pattern .
“
Above: “The risk-taking banker needs the conscientious seamstress to hold his world together”.
– Joyce Nelson, The Perfect Machine: Between, The Lines Press, 1989
The title Soul Containers refers to technologies of information gathering and representation that are accessible to, and primarily used by, people in or from the first world to ‘contain’ or order their experiences/ understanding of a situation (the third world) that appears unknown, chaotic, and overwhelmingly contradictory.
