Art at the New Hope Center

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a small center called The New Hope Center is set in the eastern city of Goma. This center was created specifically for children who have been displaced one way or other due to wartime activities. These Children experience atrocities such as witnessing massacres of entire villages, rape, child soldiering, and sometimes they are even being forced to kill their own family members. The children who come to the center can be depressed, angry and even suicidal because of what they have gone through.

Around three hundred children and teenagers come to the center with one hundred and thirty trained facilitators that come from Unicef, Norwegian Church Aid and Heal Africa (who tend to the local hospital attached to the center). Once they arrive they become involved with a number of activities: Dancing, singing, music, soccer, foosball, ping-pong, journaling, coloring and drawing. The center has a school to help orphans become educated where they tend to do exceptionally well due to the fact that they feel lucky that they can go to school, especially due to the fact that approximately forty percent of the children in Eastern Congo have the chance to go to school.

Being that the program is open-ended, there are many therapeutic methods they involve the children in. One method in particular is that the facilitators give the children a blank piece of paper and drawing utensils and let them draw whatever they want. The results usually end up being about what trauma the child went through or experienced. According to the national team leader of the New Hope Center, Anita Paden, “We never try to interpret their drawings.  They themselves explain to each other. We never force a child to talk or explain. They choose to do so.”  The purpose of these therapeutic sessions is to hopefully avoid the children ending up with depression, suicide, stuttering, or not talking at all, becoming bandits, using drugs and/or alcohol, or involving themselves in inappropriate and dangerous sexual behaviors.

After the children have completed their drawings, they are sometimes turned into necklaces by shredding the paper and rolling them into beads then selling the necklaces to help with their tuition. According to Anita Paden the children begin to believe in themselves and will be able to face the rest of their lives with confidence. “Negative things are maybe that people don't think we should talk with the children about grief and death because it could make them cry etc.” However, if the aim of this center's aim is to help the children stay off the streets and set them on the path of a better life, then the methods used there seems to work.

My questions are what do people from our western culture think of an organization like this? Are there negative aspects that can come out of a religious center like this, or should there be more organizations like this? For more information you can go to The New Hope Center’s website. There you can donate money if you feel so inclined or perhaps purchase the necklaces these children create to help them with their schooling. 

http://www.newhopecentergoma.org/index.php

Uganda Collage

The current piece that I am working on is a collage of footage of different scenes that I have during the time I was in Uganda the summer of 2010. What I have done so far is collect the footage I have and have cut them into 20-second segments which has caused me to slow down most of the footage. I then have been processing them in After Effects to either enhance the color or to mute it down so that when they are all together they will make a silhouette of a person.

The intent behind this piece is to address the aspects of the many cultures that inhabit the nation of Uganda, the issues they face and the unique culture they have. A few of the things that they face are a history of genocide and past corrupt dictators like the infamous Idi Amin. The past decade radical and violent religious groups like the Lord’s Resistant Army have been causing strife for the northern Ugandan villages. The memory of being the country most affected by AIDS only forty years ago is prevalent, and is still a struggle. The percent of the population that is under the unemployment line is thirty five percent and the education is almost nonexistent.

Even though these are only the beginning of the things the Ugandan people have to face, they are rich with culture. Regardless of the lack of resources, the people give anything they can to a mere stranger. There is a warm feeling of community and no matter the circumstance, they never give up the chance to dance or sing.

The issues that I can think might come about from this piece are the common fears of exploitation, kitsch, and the idea that I am trying to push an agenda. The questions I ask myself is how can I correctly portray the Uganda people who have affected me so much in the past few years without bumping into these problems? Regardless, I have begun this arduous work and we will hopefully see what comes of it. 

RED Bono and Hirst artist auction to help AIDS relief

On Valentine’s Day, 2008, a Sotheby art auction opened in New York. U2 musician created this auction Bono along with artist Damien Hirst. The purpose of this auction was for artists to donate their work where the proceeds would be given to an organization called Product which helps fund research in help curing AIDS in Africa, as well as funding antivirus medication that helps those who have been contracted with AIDS live longer. It is called “The Lazarus Effect”.

Bono and Hirst raked in about 60 contemporary artists who contributed to this event. Artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Tracey Emin, Matthew Barney, Georg Baselitz, Rachel Whiteread, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Sir Peter Blake, Jeff Koons, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha and Banksy.

The opening day seemed to be a success being that 17 of the artists sold work for prices higher than they had ever sold at an auction before. Damien Hirst sold art work for 1 million dollars or more each. During the auction Bono was heard repeating “what is the price of love”, which seemed to help patrons lighten their pockets even more. Over all the RED auction raised over 58 million dollars for the Global fund on the first night.

                                              Cathedral Print, St. Paul

                                                       Damien Hirst 

                                                   20,950.00 pounds

Though some would say that is a success others challenged this event in that it cost more than it raised. However, it is still an ongoing auction. A website displays all of the work that still can be purchased and the money will still be sent to the AIDS funds.

http://www.joinred.com/red/#shopred

The fallowing links are promotional videos and the actual Valentine’s Day event the year 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80vufbq6qrY&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCgkJLiLdeo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pjZ-auKFk0

Do-Good Artists In History

Although the creation of institutions for artists who participate in philanthropy is a somewhat new phenomenon, artists themselves have found ways in bringing to light unjust occurrences during their time. Now, thanks to technology, though the world feels smaller and accessible, it seems that problems keep on duplicating and growing in size.

However, before I begin my search for contemporary artist philanthropists and altogether “do-gooders” and what philanthropy means, this blog will be about their predecessors: Artist who were known for their genius and who witnessed something they believed to be unjust during their time and did something about it. People that I aspire to and will be the backbone in my research of the art-philanthropy romance and hopeful marriage.

The first artist that came to my mind was Francesco Goya. Goya was a Spanish painter and printmaker during the romanticism era. He had the misfortune of being the royal painter in Spain during the Napoleonic regime.

In November 1807, French troupes entered Spain. A year of the French military rule, the Spanish people became resentful and there was an uprising on the second of May 1808. However, by dawn of the next day, hundreds of Spanish civilians were rounded up and shot in order to stop any opposition. 

The Third of May, 1814

Even though Goya was not a supporter of the Spanish aristocracy, (other than being employed by them) he quickly became disenchanted by the French and their original ideals, which had been the catalyst for the French Revolution a decade earlier. With Goya’s suggestion, the government of Spain commissioned him to paint something that would depict the horrors that had been inflicted upon the Spanish people. Throughout his career Goya would also print illustrations speaking out against not only the French, but also against the Spanish government and the Spanish Inquisition.

Not long after, a different horrific event occurred regarding a French ship called “The Medusa”. The Medusa set sail with a retired viscount as their captain, who hadn’t sailed for twenty years. He aimed to make good time and pushed the ship to go faster than normal and ran it aground off the West African coast. Being that there were few lifeboats and four hundred passengers, they made a crudely constructed raft and piled 146 people on it. After two weeks of starvation, insanity and cannibalism, a ship finally rescued the survivors. However, out of the 146 people, 15 men had survived.

The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819

An artist who was at that time unknown named Theodore Gericault heard about this incident when it arrived to Paris and became an international scandal. Shocked by such a horrific event mainly caused by the concept concept of a hierarchy in class, Gericault commissioned himself, an act rarely done amongst artists, to paint his romanticized version of this event. His larger than life-sized painting was displayed in the famous Paris Salon and established his reputation.

After the genre of Romanticism came Realism with the master artist Gustave Courbet. Although he came from a wealthy family he himself became anti-monarchical and chose to live simply. A subject matter that was of particular interest to him was the conditions of the serfs or working class of that time. Before his time, art was limited to four subject matters: History, portraits, still life and landscape. No one ever dared to paint the lower classes for they were not of interest, nor did the higher classes wish to know the hardships of the poor. To the rich, or more importantly, the patrons, they were perfectly happy to keep things the way they were.

The Stone Breakers, 1850

The Stone Breakers was Courbet’s depiction of the hardships of the serf’s life. This painting could not have been painted during a more opportune time being that only two years before the second French Revolution broke out due to injustices placed upon people just because the station they were born into. Hardships like having jobs of breaking stones to fill potholes in the streets as depicted in this painting.

Skipping ahead nearly one hundred years later and to an artist who was a master of photography and difficulties of the American Great Depression. During this time Migrant workers were trekking down to California for some hope of a job in picking fruit. However they received barely any income to survive. Dorothea Lang was a photographer who captured the consequences of the Depression.

Migrant Mother, 1936

The best way to describe this image is through Dorothea Lang’s own words:

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

To conclude, these artists and many others like J.M.W. Turner who painted the ugly truths of slavery, Arthur Szyk who painted the horrors of the holocaust, Kathe Kollwitz who did prints and sculptures of the poor and oppressed in Germany and Pablo Picasso who’s famous painting Guernica depicted the oppression of the fascist on the Spanish people, and many others where leaders for artists of today to continue in their footsteps.