Sharlene Khan (South Africa 1977-) Blind Help ,2011
Estimate (low-high) :
Provenance : Gallery Momo, Johannesburg.
Notes : Main store JHB
This multi-media work depicts a sight that we’ve come to see often at intersections to the point we’ve become immune to them – someone with disabilities begging for assistance. In this case, it is someone who is blind that is assisted by another. As we often look away or look past, we forget these are real people facing so many of the struggles we are and then having to negotiate such realities with these different abilities in an urbanscape and economy not structured to recognised them. For over eleven years, Sharlene Khan’s work has engaged with issues of the informal trading sector on South African city streets. Other Stories depicts African immigrants and refugees who trade at traffic lights around local shopping malls she frequented in Johannesburg. People who sell wares are seen daily as they approach our cars at traffic lights hawking cheap wares, but little do we know about our African neighbours. Many of them tertiary educated, forced to migrate to South Africa in the face of debilitating economic conditions back home in Zimbabwe, Malawi, the Congo, Sudan. Who are they? What are their hopes, their dreams for their families? Where do they see themselves in 5 years time? What stories do they have to share if they were asked? Khan conducted a series of interviews with such persons from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda, Botswana, etc., and asked them questions about this fleeting job prospect, how South Africans reacted to them, what some of the hardships were that they experienced, what were their hopes and dreams for their children and families back home. These interviews were transcribed and painted onto canvases over which images of the street traders were then drawn onto and finally embroidered. The first four artworks of the series was executed before the May 2008 xenophobic attacks erupted in townships around Johannesburg. The second four artworks, executed after May 2008 have an additionally embroidered level which depicts the empty streets as immigrants fled South Africa and prominent spaces during May and August 2008. The last four paintings in this series depict the return of the migrants to vending around Johannesburg, despite the continued threats of xenophobia they are faced with. - Sharlene Khan
Condition_report : The overall condition is good.
