Sunday Times E-Edition

‘Remember them’, is embroidery artist’s message on scourge of GBV

By SIPOKAZI FOKAZI

● Infuriated by gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa, Nell-Louise Pollock has embroidered the names of more than 1,600 women and children killed in the past year onto a piece of fabric to ensure they are never forgotten.

The work, titled Dear Mr President, is an open letter to Cyril Ramaphosa.

“My idea is to hand it over to the office of the president. The artwork will be over 20m long, so he [can decide what he] would like to do with the piece,” she said.

Pollock, who considers herself a craftivist — someone who uses crafts to achieve political or social change — started working on the piece during 2021’s 16 Days of Activism campaign.

She plans to add the final names in 2023 after the crime statistics for the last quarter of 2022 are released.

“My hope is to have this letter handed to President Ramaphosa. I want him to roll open the white fabric like a sacred scroll and read the names out loud. I want him to be embarrassed by the names embroidered in red thread, a symbol of the blood that continues to drench our soil, stark against the white fabric of innocence lost.”

From April to September, 558 children were killed in South Africa, with police minister Bheki Cele saying this demonstrated that communities were failing to protect youngsters.

Grim crime statistics show that between July 1 and September 30, 989 women were murdered, 1,277 were victims of attempted murder and 13,000 were assaulted.

Pollock said the 1,641 GBV victims she names deserve to be remembered, not as statistics, “but as names on a billboard ... a never-to-be-forgotten reminder that needs to become a part of our national collective”.

“Embroidering each name gives me time to pause and remember them. It’s a timeconsuming labour of love that I do daily in honour of each life lost. I am stitching their memory onto fabric ... a reminder that their names should be shared with conviction. They are our mothers, our sisters, our aunts, our wives, our grandmothers, our daughters, our granddaughters and our life partners. They are the backbone of our country.”

Pollock was 19 when she was raped by two men. Now, the self-taught embroidery artist uses art to heal her pain. Her work was inspired by 19-year-old Uyinene Mrwetyana, who was raped and murdered in Cape Town in 2019.

“My journey with craftivism started in late August 2019 as I stood in front of the Clareinch post office where I collect my mail and dispatch packages ... This is the same post office where Uyinene was brutally raped and murdered. Looking at the flowers and messages [there], I got angry. Fear and resentment have lived with me ever since. I decided that day to use my art to highlight the plight of my country’s women and the war that is waged against us every day.”

Pollock’s art was featured at Cape Town Opera’s recent GBV awareness concert, One in Three, at the Artscape Theatre. Dear Mr President was displayed in the foyer before and after the show.

Pollock’s work Crucified, which depicts a woman with safety pins closing her eyes and her mouth covered by cloth, was also on display.

“The fabric over our mouths is to keep our abuse and plight quiet and keep us living with the shame of abuse. It shows that we have no voice in our patriarchal society. It also represents the deafening silence from government in respect of the fight against GBV.”

Magdalene Minnaar, artistic director of Cape Town Opera, said Pollock’s work stood out because of its powerful message.

“We used her work to thread through the entire production, which worked very beautifully.”

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2022-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

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