As Sierra Leone begins to recover from a vicious civil war that has encompassed the last 11 years, leaving more than 50,000 dead, native artists have been looking for an outlet to express the pain and fear their population endured.
The result of these Sierra Leonean artists' efforts, \Representations of Violence: Art of the Sierra Leonean Civil War,"" will be on display at the Porter Butts Gallery in the Memorial Union. Accompanying the exhibit, which runs March 1-30, is a three-day conference, Feb. 28-March 1, which features speakers from around the country and the world, discussing native art, theatre and poetry as expressions against the civil war. U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. will be making an appearance as a featured guest speaker. The conference and exhibit were inspired by the 21st Century African Youth Movement with participation from the Wisconsin Union Directorate and the African Studies Department at UW-Madison.
With the official conclusion to the Sierra Leone civil war occurring in February 2002, the country now finds itself attempting to rebuild what the last decade destroyed. However, the longstanding tradition of violence and cultural decay must be addressed. While there has been coverage by CNN and The New York Times, the majority of mainstream media has ignored the violent war. Though thousands of refugees fled the county and found solace in countries such as the United States, the world continues to disregard the unstable condition that remains in Sierra Leone.
Wanting to bring the atrocities to the pubic eye, Abu-Hasnan Koroma, a Sierra Leonean, originated the ""Sierra Leone Civil War Folk Art Exhibit."" He founded The 21st Century African Youth Movement in order to raise the international awareness of injustices within African countries. Through the creation of political folk art, the group hopes to reach and educate an international audience.
""The situation in Sierra Leone is not something a lot of people are familiar with,"" Laura Amundson of the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee states ""We hope this exhibit will bring awareness and spark interest in the community.""
The exhibit consists of 36 native artists, mostly with little or no formal training, creating deeply personal works with the mindset that their art will call international attention to the plight of their people. ""We want to educate people about the crisis, then address ways to prevent the problem,"" Amundson explains.
The exhibit itself contains numerous folk art works and three textile prints. Many of the scenes are depictions of a singular day, Jan. 6, when the rebels and soldiers clashed in the capital city, Freetown. ""That day everyone has a story about; what they saw, who they knew, who had died, even children know that day,"" said Jennifer Wilson, a coordinator for the exhibit. The depictions are graphic and brutal; involving dismembered children, mass executions and violent rapes. But they provoke a strong sense of reality, as these are the things that the artists saw from their windows.
Often the perpetrators of violence appear in multiple paintings as recurring characters, leading one to suspect that the artist watched this man kill his friends and family.
The scenes create disturbing depictions of truth, as entire families lay, limbs severed in pools of blood and pregnant woman weep as their fetus is cut from inside them.
Many works are 'street scenes,' busy, vibrant and brutal. These works encapsulate the pandemonium of Jan. 6. The numerous figures in each street scene are all engaged in the battle in some way, while rebels tote guns, mutilate and kill, numerous civilians lie, dead or dying, tortured or attempting to escape. One man walks, bound, in the corner of a painting, and at first glance he is overlooked, invisible due to the bright colored chaos surrounding him, his mouth is padlocked shut. As he moves amidst the injustice and atrocities, this man can not speak out. This painting serves to symbolize the mission of the exhibit, to finally unlock the unnoticed man's voice and let his story be told.
