WSSD: Art Exhibition on Disability

Office on the Status of Disabled Persons in the Presidency Presents: BEYOND BARRIERS - AN ART EXHIBITION ON DISABILITY AT THE JOHANNESBURG ART GALLERY AUGUST 29 - SEPTEMBER 29

The Office on the Status of Disabled Persons in the Presidency (OSDP) and the Visual Arts and Crafts Academy (VACA) will be opening the exhibition Beyond Barriers at the Johannesburg Art
Gallery on August 29 at 6pm.

Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad, will be delivering the opening address. Within the context of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the exhibition seeks to explore issues around disability as expressed through art by both artists with disabilities and those without.

The Exhibition will give us an opportunity to question our perceptions and also consider how integration, healing and empowerment can be achieved through Art. Sustainable development is directly relevant to people with disabilities, who continue to find themselves in alien environments that do not accommodate them. Broader than this are issues about the right to equal access in terms of information, education, employment, adequate healthcare and access to infrastructure such as buildings and transport.

As Kalle Konkkola, disability activist, once said, " Just as disabled people must contend with an incompatible environment, so must a disabled earth contend with an environment made incompatible
through modernisation."

Beyond Barriers uses art as a site where we can explore issues through a different lens. The power of art lies in its ability to shift perspectives and to create a new way of interpreting the world. The exhibition is a collection of works by artists exploring various forms of awareness to access and rights. Through sound
installations, tactile art, photography, visual art and craft, artists have told a story about disability and development that goes far beyond rhetoric. Willem Boschoff indicates in his work Blind Alphabet that we can learn to "see the things we miss".

Other work includes extracts from the Human Rights Portfolio, which articulates that access to basic necessities is a right for all people.

Based on the bill of rights, this portfolio affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.

Artist, Mandla Mabila, uses art as a weapon to fight prejudice and oppressive systems. He believes that people with disabilities should be creating their own images, reclaiming their identity from those who have historically moulded it, shaped it and spoken on behalf of it. Dan Rakgoathe, whose work Father Son, Mother Moon is on exhibit, is an artist who sets himself up as a mystic and regards his blindness as being a necessary dimension to his journey, providing him with further insights and visions. The Alexander and Vosloorus Disability Movement utilise beadwork and sewing to create landscapes on cloth related to their empowerment.

Dorothee Kreutzfeld explores destructive processes such as conflict and trauma and looks at the collapse of the space between the public and private. Her work aims to create a space where experiences of trauma and survival could be testified to and witnessed as part of our history and culture.

Artists with mental disabilities create their worlds on fabric and in diaries, providing an interesting perspective by those who are often marginalized and excluded from participation. Ben Nsusha's "Man on the Chair" is a larger than life piece of a wheelchair user carrying music on his journey. Nsusha was selected as artist in residence in Grahamstown at the National Arts Festival in 2000. Other work includes learners from various schools who used clay and photography to negotiate the relationship of disability,
otherness and the construction of identity.

Beyond Barriers begins to challenge the notions of space, self and society. It poses questions about separately allocated spaces and their implications. It is a must see on the cultural calendar
of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The exhibition will run until the 29th September. Opening night is open to the public. Sign Language interpretation will be available. Walkabouts and workshops will take place, where the artists and
curators will interact with the public. For more information on the workshops contact: Corol Bijoux, VACA Director on 0828245491.

For further information contact Shelley Barry, Media Officer at
the OSDP on 0824631991
Issued by: Office of the Presidency
26 Aug 2002