At the 2008 Australasian Quilt Convention (AQC) one of the most striking exhibitions did not come from Australian quilters. Instead, it came from embroiderers working in South Africa as part of the Kopanang Project. In an environment wracked with poverty and HIV/AIDS, this ancient craft is proving a financial and emotional life buoy to a very special group of women and their families. Even Oprah Winfrey thinks so!
Kopanang is a Sotho word, meaning gathering together and building bridges. Irish-born Sister Sheila Flynn came to Melbourne for 2008 AQC to help exhibit work from the women at the Mission where she works and to share their stories with delegates. At an early morning session this fast talking, joke cracking nun had many of her audience fighting back tears as she described the plight of grieving mothers but also of women who are taking their future into their own hands.
Sister Sheila is part of a group of Dominican Sisters who run a Catholic Mission for the people of Tsakane and Geluksdal in South Africa. Mining was once a key industry for the area but the last mine closed in the early 1960s. Work opportunities have dried up in the region. Fifteen hundred cases of AIDS are diagnosed every day and Sister Sheila says it’s estimated that 40 million children will be orphaned by AIDS by 2010.
When the Dominicans first started The Kopanang Project the women did not know how to thread a needle. “That wouldn’t have been so bad but I was only ever five stitches ahead of them... and that remains the case today,” Sister Sheila jokes.
All members of the embroidery group are either HIV positive or are caring for someone with the condition. “They remain strong in the face of all this pain... at times of great sorrow the women sometimes break into a low hum, they start humming together. It’s an experience of God’s presence unlike anything I’ve ever come across,” says the nun, who bought the first lot of embroidery threads using money a relative had sent her for her birthday.
The first project the women tried was stitching an outline of their hands. “I asked them to list their gifts with these hands,” says Sister Sheila. “Strong hands could be a gift as could be a listening heart. I also asked them to list their hopes. Their hopes were for one thing... a better future for their children.”
Today some of the women who’ve learned to embroider are now going out and teaching others. The Dominicans operate a children’s centre where 500 meals are provided for orphans every day. There is never much money around but Sister Sheila takes “leaps of faith” - one time she bought a mouse pad even though she had no computer. Not long after friends from the USA visited the Project. They bought her a computer.
Members of the Project often struggle to get to their classes. “One of our teachers is permanently on crutches,” says the nun. “She walks 90 minutes each way to get to class. It should only really be a 15 minute walk.” The women also engage in silk screening, embroidery design, African quilting and bead making.
The Kopanang Project sold its first commissioned piece to the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco. Numerous other commissions have followed. At AQC two artists from the project, Johanna Zulu and Mpho Sibonyoni, also attended to represent the Project. Many works were sold.
When Oprah Winfrey opened her Leadership School in Johannesburg for disadvantaged girls, fulfilling a promise she made to former President Nelson Mandela, she commissioned thirteen tapestries from The Kopanang Art Project for the school. She said, “Girls who are educated are less likely to get HIV/ AIDS and, in this country which has such a pandemic, we have to begin to change the pandemic”.
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