ARTAFRICAFaith is powerful, and not easily controlled. It is not always positive. The fundamentalists who killed
one hundred-thirty people in Paris, for their belief in a better world, acted on faith. Faith can also
inspire life in times of crisis. This is something Shweta Bhattad (one of the artists and activists present
for the conversation at ‘Foreign Exchange’) confronted in Paris. “When the authorities heard her
performance was called Faith, they had already decided ‘no,’” says Deneth Piumakshi, a Sri-Lankan
artist who tried to get permissions ahead of time. Shweta came to Paris to be buried alive in a coffin
dressed as Mother India, only to rise again. Her symbolic action champions the cause of farmers in
India: committing suicide due to crop failure, debt cycles, adverse weather conditions and the lack of
a government security net. The performance was to be recorded and placed online for hundreds of
farmers back home who had gathered to watch it in the city of Nagpur. Asking for official permission
in this case was not going to get any results. The event was small and personal, attended by ‘Foreign
Exchange’ participants only, their hands raw from digging the grave. This private mode of production
left a significant mark on these people, who continued to converse about it online weeks after they
had returned to their home countries.
Truly experimental communal practices and social art projects often fall below the radar of the
mainstream art world. Unlikely to produce grand authors or famous objects, they are misaligned with
the art market’s values of rarity, exclusivity and privileged experiences, and therefore its publicity
machine. I’m talking about citizenship, responsibility and self-initiated action. I’m talking about
choosing to be there. I’m talking about faith in our own abilities as artists and faith in one another to
recreate the world anew. Nobody can predict the future, for South Africa, the Global South or the
Earth. What we can do is mobilise ourselves and our communities in a shared defiance of current
realities. We can learn from history.
Kai Lossgott is an interdisciplinary artist and the Barclays l’Atelier Award for African Artists
Winner 2015, currently in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2011,
for the climate train project during COP17 in Durban, he curated ‘Letters from the Sky,’ an
international artist’s video ‘delegation’ screened in the official delegates’ hotel lobbies.
CREATING A CLIMATE OF FAITH IN PARIS / KAI LOSSGOTT 6/6
FEATURE / COP21 PARISMoney created by a
guest in a bowl next
to Shweta Bhattad’s
work Faith at ‘Foreign
Exchange,’ 7th
December 2015,
Paris. Photograph:
Rajyashri Goody.
Courtesy of the
photographer.