The Hub

Puppets with a cause

By Lineo Segoete

Street art refers to the act of creating and performing visual arts in the public domain. It is born from the artist’s desire to directly address burning issues within society through visual messages where everyone can see them. Driven by passion and an eagerness to learn and push creative boundaries, artists from Lesotho, South Africa and France have literally come together under one roof for a workshop initiated by Alliance Francaise De Maseru (AF) to design and build giant puppets.

The workshop is host to a bunch of 34 artists mainly from Lesotho. These artists range from actors, dancers, fine artists, musicians, writers, fashion and graphic designers and craftsmen. It is facilitated by a joint initiative between Les Grande Personnes– the French Collective and Giant Match– the South African Collective when. The two collectives were introduced by French Institut South Africa (IFAS) in South Africa in 2010 which is when Giant Match was conceived. AF Maseru henceforth partnered with IFAS to bring the project to Lesotho from January 28 to February 11.

PSI Lesotho fitted the last piece of the puzzle by adding a worthy cause to the exercise. The giant puppets are a dare to the artists to combine ideas and teamwork to encourage males to get tested for HIV/AIDS. This enthusiastically interactive exchange is the first of its kind in Lesotho and the excitement of all the stakeholders is vividly evident.

Every collaborator is expected to participate regardless of having never performed the specific task before. We kicked off with creating mud sculptures for the benefit of giving our characters an identity. Next, we had to divide in groups to formulate a storyline (without dialogue). Then we had to convey our characters’ personalities and attitudes through designing the kind of clothes they would wear.

At face value the workshop seemed easy enough but turns out to be rather daunting as we progress. Firstly, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of our target audiences, and create something that they can relate to. Then we have to open our imaginations enough to be able to do things we assumed we were incapable of. Lastly, we must develop a stronger appreciation for our environment- its landscape and contours- as our stage.

Tedious as the days are, we have tons of fun. There is free and open communication between everyone which makes it easy for us to just be ourselves. Our facilitators too, aside from being stern professionals, have wonderful people-skills, are laidback, humorous and extremely talented. They have vast experience in giant puppetry and have done projects throughout Africa and Europe.

We all stand to gain a great deal from the synergy that exists among us.

The project is also funded in camaraderie with artistic engagement and dialogue by Aubervilliers– a municipality in Paris with the added intention to effect social awareness and participation.

The first week of the workshop has simply gone by in a flash of lightening. Each day is an adventure not only on a creative level, but on a personal one too. It is testing us to really think about what motivates our arts and our own psyches as the voices our environment relies on to conscientise and educate our people.

Stream Thube by Pitso Rah Makhula

Thube is a Single by Pitso Rah Makhula & Ntsoana-Tsatsi, featuring Manini Mosehle. Released January 2014, Thube marks the Bands’ come back after releasing Debut Album ‘Ntsoana-Tsatsi’ in 2010. The single includes a Radio, Acapella, and Instrumental Version.

Producer: Maranatha Nkoati

Executive Producer: Thato Mokoena

Engineer: Khotso Thahane

Final Mastering: Bokang Mohololi

Demons exposed, and they’re beautiful!

By Lineo Segoete

Emilio Villa writes “Poetry is to forget forgetfulness. Poetry is to separate self from self. Poetry is what’s completely left out. Poetry is emptying without exhausted”, now combine that with a live band and equally talented featured guests and you have “Demons Exposed” by Siphiwe Nzima Ntṧekhe.

Siphiwe is not conventional; hers is not the kind of poetry you read in High School. She will not stand in front of you and sentence your mind to a recollection of Mzwakhe Mbuli or Lebo Mashile (as seen on TV). She might shock you, anger you, make you smile or even confuse you, but she will not leave you unaffected.

This is a poet who strips naked before the whole of society and lures its attention not through her naked body, but through the music in her voice. She vacuums the things that form a lump in her throat and bleeds them out on paper, she assembles the things that exhilarate her and tames them on paper and she draws you in through her theatric and yet sincere narration. You cannot help but listen.

Her album title Demons Exposed instantly implies something along the lines of Usher’s Confessions. It is personal and risky, revealing to the world her life experiences, her wake up calls, elements of self discovery and even rebellion.

A poet’s work is not done unless he/she can shake you up both emotionally and mentally. Siphiwe does justice to the cause. Demons Exposed caters for the Jazz fanatics, the Hip Hop heads and the suckers for powerful vocals. The point is not to bore people with ceaseless whining and abstract metaphors after all, the point is to share, build and entertain.

Poems to look out for: Demons exposed and King’s Way.

Radio brings the noise from Reagan-era New York

Originally posted by Yes! Weekly

By Jordan Green

Johnny Collins, also known as Radio the Artist, is on a roll these days.

A resident of Kernersville, Radio has made some inroads as an artist in Winston-Salem over the past couple years, particularly with a mural he painted with students at Petree Elementary.

Then, last year, he hooked up with the 512 Collective, a group of High Point artists who share a gallery on Washington Street, and soon found an agent in Ryan Saunders, a social entrepreneur who is working on multiple fronts to whip that city into cultural relevance.

Saunders is helping Radio promote an upcoming solo show at Studio 7 in Winston-Salem’s vaunted Downtown Arts District. Slight, with a friendly demeanor, the 24-year-old Radio is a tireless promoter of his own work with a disarming eagerness to talk about his intentions and techniques. His use of Sharpies, ink pens, crayons and other proletarian implements has led at least one of his handlers to mistakenly bill him as a folk artist, but as the son of New York transplants, he’s keenly aware of the modernist traditions from whence his art springs.

His “square dude” character — a trisected square with rolled-back eyes and a lolling tongue — is nearly ubiquitous in the Triad, and hairless, egg-shaped heads proliferate in Radio’s visual work. His more recent work juxtaposes a pastoral naturalism through watercolors with chaotic human intervention through jagged line drawings.

Radio’s heavy emphasis on line recalls Keith Haring. His intuitive style developed through repetition of forms and tolerance for imperfection — almost a visual equivalent of the Beat poets’ spontaneous wordplay — takes a page from Jean-Michel Basquiat. Reaching back slightly further, Radio’s undiscriminating embrace of all sources references the pop art of Andy Warhol, also an inspiration for Haring.

They all flourished in the New York art scene of the 1980s — a convergence of underground street art, activism and high commerce, and died one by one — in 1987, 1988 and 1990.

Radio was born in North Carolina, his parents having migrated from New York for work, at about the same time that the scene fell away with the passing of Haring, Basquiat and Warhol. But his parents exposed him to their work. And Radio’s uncle was a graffiti and fine artist, who served as a family inspiration. Radio’s mother, whom he describes as “the hip lady,” regaled him with stories about encountering old-school hiphop celebrities like Kurtis Blow.

Reinforcing his pop leanings, Radio’s mom also turned him on to Hanna-Barbera cartoon reruns such as “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons” and “Scooby-Doo!” that impressed him with their thick lines and bright color palette. His dad introduced him to Japanese animation, including “Speed Racer” and the forerunner of “Voltron.”

Radio embraces Haring’s affinity for social activism, speaking admiringly about the “Crack is wack” mural painted in East Harlem in 1986.

Today, Radio sees gun violence and homophobia as the social ills that need to be addressed.

Halos, crosses and crowns in Radio’s paintings typically represent power of some kind — civil, military or religious — a mark of distinction over looming figures that overwhelm the little people, represented by eggshaped heads crammed together.

“With the halos and crosses, they supposed to be good people, but they’re really not,” Radio said. “They’re oppressing the people. They’re not helping the people. All the things I’ve been hearing in the media about the governor and Congress, they’re supposed to be helping people, but instead they’re neglecting them.”

The one-story brick duplex where Radio stays in Kernersville might be a far cry from the cultural ferment of the 1980s New York art world, but it’s his scene.

“What I like about North Carolina as an artist is that, even though there’s not much to do, that’s the point: It’s like a blank canvass,” he said. “If I went to New York or California, those places are flooded with artists who are doing the same thing as me. I stand out here — like a sore thumb.”

The Greensboro Historical Museum screens a documentary by a group of Montagnard students, titled The Young ‘Mountaineers’: An Untold Story of Montagnard Youth in Greensboro, on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. The event also features quilted panels depicting the experiences of a young immigrant from Vietnam by Betty Stratford, an educator at Mendenhall Middle School.

Artist Ibrahim Said gives a talk about his work at the Bennett College Art Gallery at Steele Hall in Greensboro on Friday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County kicks off its 2014 annual campaign at the Milton Rhodes Arts Center on Thursday at 8 a.m.

The annual Bookmarks festival, which takes place in early September, is moving from the Downtown Arts District at Trade and 6 th streets, to the Milton Rhodes Arts Center, the organization announced on Tuesday.

Johnny and The Hub are plotting how to bring him to Lesotho for art workshops. Want to see murals by Radio! popping up around Lesotho? Let us know!

Find Radio! on facebook

Radio! in Raleigh, NC with photographer Meri Hyöky:

Photo essay: The Horror of “Corrective Rape” in South Africa

Originally posted by Slate

By David Rosenberg

Zukiswa Gaca, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In December 2009, Gaca left a party to buy cigarettes. A man she had just met accompanied her. He led her to a shack where someone was sleeping. “He said he was going to show me I was a woman, so he took off his pants and put a blanket over the man sleeping on the bed. He raped me in front of his friend, who just lay there under the blanket,” she said. © Clare Carter

Long before LGBTQ rights were on many countries’ radars, South Africa banned discrimination against gay people in 1996 and legalized same-sex marriage in 2005—the fifth country in the world to do so. Yet many gay men and lesbians in this patriarchal society face extreme and sometimes deadly discrimination. In 2008, a South African lesbian soccer player training for the World Cup was raped and murdered in a crime known as “corrective rape.” The term, believed to originate in South Africa due to its prevalence there, refers to when gay men or women are raped to “cure” them of their sexual orientation; the hate crime is almost never reported or prosecuted.

When British photographer Clare Carter heard of these crimes, she was surprised that the gay community would be so violently targeted. “I didn’t understand the contradictions,” Carter said. “I couldn’t understand why people were being assaulted for having loving relationships and why the individual’s right to choose who they love was causing such conflicts.”

After researching the issue, Carter headed to South Africa on one of many trips she took over a two-year period while working in New York assisting photographer Nan Goldin. She decided to work on a project that was comprehensive enough to show the victims of corrective rape and to underscore the problem’s scope of culpability.

Pearl Mali, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In 2004 when Mali was 12 years old, she was raped for the first time by an elderly man that her mother brought home from church. He raped Pearl in her own bedroom, which he did daily until she was 16. “My mother didn’t want me to be gay, so she asked him to move in and be my husband. She hoped it would change me,” she said. © Clare Carter

Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town. Khayelitsha is reputed to be the largest and fastest-growing township in South Africa. The name is translated from Xhosa, meaning “New Home.” According to the South African police, 249 sexual crimes were reported between April 2011 and May 2012; however, the majority of sexual crimes go unreported. © Clare Carter

Nono Ntshangan, Nyanga, Cape Town. After Ntshangan’s cousin discovered she was a lesbian, he raped her each time he saw her. She had his daughter in 2000. “He never approved of me being a lesbian. He always wanted me to be a girl,” she said. © Clare Carter

She began by connecting with people involved with NGOs in South Africa—some of whom had been victims of corrective rape—who then put her in touch with other victims. The more she visited and gained the trust of people, the more she would be introduced to victims and to people indirectly involved, including priests who believe homosexuality can be changed and police who often did little to protect those who came forward about their attacks. “It was like peeling an onion,” Carter said. “Just layer upon layer, and there was always more to the story. It’s never black and white: cultural, religious, familial—they all have a hand in what’s happening.”

Despite the country’s progressive laws, South African men use corrective rape as a means of asserting their masculinity and frustration with the liberal laws, Carter said. She said many men don’t like or don’t understand why a woman would wear her hair short or wouldn’t wear a dress. “What I was being told about gender and sexuality [by the perpetrators] was: ‘Why are you stealing our girlfriends? We’re going to rape you and show you what it is like to be a woman,’ ” Carter said. “They don’t understand the relationship between being a woman and feeling attractive to other women.”

To create a visual storyboard of what she discovered, Carter included death certificates, scenes of the crimes, and other shots of evidence. Carter also decided to photograph the women with a classic sense of portraiture, something she said is common in her other work, to capture the women’s bravery. “One might expect survivors to become more insular and protective about who they are after a corrective rape, but most are not—that’s what was so empowering to me,” she said. “Most don’t change the way they dress or act or wear their hair. They are showing that the men who are perpetrating these homophobic attacks aren’t winning, and they are staying true to who they are.”

Carter is currently working on a book about the project. Although she feels the project’s photography is finished, she says her work as an activist and supporter of the NGOs she worked with will continue.