THE ARTS AND GRIEF

BY MATHAPELO MOFOKENG

With close to 70 000 South Africans lost due to Covid-19, many of us find ourselves in constant mourning. We mourn our lost livelihoods, loved ones and a life that doesn’t require mask-wearing, sanitising and physical distancing. The arts and culture sector - already a challenging landscape to be part of - has felt the insurmountable loss and impact brought by the pandemic keenly. Many have been left without work and audiences, events have been cancelled, beloved organisations have closed and so many of our colleagues have passed on.

On top of that, our mourning traditions have also been interrupted by this virus. We find ourselves unable to grieve as a community, and instead, we are burying our loved ones over video conferencing platforms and left to mend our crying hearts in isolation. Working through loss has become more challenging than ever. One way artists are facing this crisis is by relying on their practices to process their grief. This, of course, is not a surprise because the arts have always been a place for exploration, processing and reflection for artists and their audiences. The value of their role at this time, to create and hold spaces - be they physical or virtual - cannot be underestimated. It is in those spaces that we are able to explore and transform our own losses.

Earlier this year, beloved co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of Unmute Dance Theatre, Themba Mbuli passed on. Unmute is a dance company that has created five inclusive projects that have helped create access and integrate people with and without disabilities in one environment. Nadine Mckenzie, co-founder and Artistic Director, said this about their loss, “Our company is very small and we’re a close bunch, we have a great sense of support and care for each other. Knowing he had passed and we could not be there in the way we would have wished to is something that is still very painful.” They created “Traces of Memory” which is inspired by the award-winning Mbuli’s love and passion for the arts, in addition to their adoration and respect for him. The piece sees “the company go down memory lane, revisiting through dance and the display of imagery some of the works created by Mbuli during his 7 years with the company”.

Nadine and the rest of the company took solace in taking work that was completely different and transforming it into a tribute to Themba for the National Arts Festival 2021. “…it was the only thing we could dive into at the time. There was no way we could do something new or different or existing. We felt we needed to honour his memory and pay tribute first before we could go about doing anything else,” states Nadine. The piece gave them space and time to process their grief, as well as the opportunity to reminisce about all they had shared. The impact of work such as “Traces of Memory” ripples further though than its immediate subject. Watching it, one finds other losses surfacing, and so the space becomes one of communal grief.

Covid-19 has hit everyone in multiple places - we mourn those who have died, but we also find ourselves mourning the loss of opportunities. One such loss was felt by Amy Louise Wilson who could not bring her awardwinning play to the stage. For her, the experience was transformative, as she birthed a new project titled “AnotherKind”, adapted from the original play “Another Kind of Dying”.

Like most work that can longer be viewed by an inperson audience, it was showcased virtually at this year’s iteration of the National Arts Festival. This newly - and collaboratively - imagined work is a story told using multimedia. It includes live-typing, collaged visuals, handwritten notes, and captivating music. It is a story of a young man from the Eastern Cape who moves to the city of gold – Johannesburg - after his father’s passing away. In her recent piece for BUBBLEGUMCLUB, Amy describes the protagonist as “moving between memory, dream and experience as he grapples with his new reality”. When asked about the loss of the original work during a post-show Zoom chat, Amy mentioned that they were past the loss. She elaborates, “We were in the process of casting when the pandemic hit South Africa. It was devastating, and it took me time to imagine another format that I thought could really do it justice. I decided to create the work in the form of a 6-week creative lab…”

“AnotherKind” is easily some of the best and most personable work I’ve seen on any virtual platform. What makes it more brilliant is Amy’s sensitivity to the times we are living through. She dropped “dying” from her project name, and instead the play title on the website now includes, “Another kind of… being, processing, of joy, living, loving and longing”. She also begins this new work by acknowledging the impact of this pandemic, even capturing what a lot of us have whispered to each other “I want to be elsewhere, I want to go to another planet.” Her work feels like an honouring of the past (by still including parts of the original play) and a robust reimagining and archiving of this new work.

As we mourn our individual and collective losses, it is good to know that we can look to artists, as we have in the past, for spaces to reflect and process what we are all feeling. Whether it’s through vulnerable pieces like Unmute’s “Traces of Memory” that are in honour of a loved one and walk us through their mourning so that perhaps we can do so too. Or a piece like “AnotherKind” that is reflective of what we are living through and how adaptable we need to be. Hopefully, the audiences will return the favour to the creative world by supporting artists now more than ever.

Nomabotwe Mtimkulu singing in the Hope In A Candlelight Concert- to inspire hope and to lift the spirits of those who are dealing with the effects of the pandemic. She shared the stage with poet and musician, Ntomboxolo Nomkhalo, and musician, Kamohelo Molebeleli.

Mark Wessels