kilmany-jo liversage

Tapestry of the Semiotic Theory

red-HIV aids

Pink-breast awareness...campaigned at certain times in the year to create awareness..3million South Africans are infected with HIV-the largest number of individuals living with the virus in a single country-and the 1.1million AIDS orphans. The international crime statistics report(ICPO) indicate that South Africa has the highest rape ratio in the world.5.537 million woman are infected with breast cancer each year. This work is based on the Semiotic Theory.
The theory helps to reform society and helps generate change and education on various issues specifically in this case : aids ,cancer and abuse on woman .
The three awareness ribbons in the composition pays tribute to women of South Africa, specifically as these issues are rising to pandemic proportions in this country as well as globally.
The pink ribbon stands for breast cancer awareness for all women. It helps to promote the issue
that woman should have a mammogram every year when they reach a certain age.
The red ribbon stands for the idea of finding a cure, thinking and memorialising the people that have already lost the fight to HIV and aids.
The white ribbon is a visual symbol for men against woman abuse. This form of abuse can also be linked to the spread of aids amongst women through rape and refusing to wear a condom which happens in certain African cultures.
The female figure in this composition is called Nellie, a Zulu woman, who is living with aids. She is a representative figure for women in South Africa who are affected by one of these epidemics. She is taking anti –retroviral treatment and has 2 children who are not infected with aids.I did art workshops on aids awareness with underpriveleged children from neighborhoods in Cape Town:Du Noon,Joe Slovo and Kensington

I am a South African contemporary artist who works in urban styles and deals particularly with social commentary affecting the vulnerable sectors of society.Please look at my website<9href=http://www.orda.co.za where you can see more of my portfolio work
Kilmany-Jo Liversage(Cape Town,South Africa)

Spier Sculpture Bienale (Stellenbosch,Cape Town 2003)

Orda 2006 Exhibition(BLANK PROJECTS Cape Town, South Africa)

Urban Greetings (Colombia, South America)

Urban Greetings (Cape Town, South Africa)

Graffiti is Public Art (Medellin,Colombia 2005)

Juan Arturo Piedrahita

Juan Fernando Velez

Kilmany-Jo Liversage......group exhibition at the Paul Bardwell Gallery(Centro Colombo Americano)

little colombian girls from the communas

I worked in the communas(rural neighborhoods)of Medellin, Colombia with children doing workshops in art

Skull(juanf velez)and Monkeys(kilmany-Jo Liversage)

Kilmany-Jo Liversage(Paul Bardwell Gallery,Medellin, South America)

Graffismos(Colombia)

Archy75 stencil (Colombia)

graffismos

Collaborative graffiti intervention withColombian artist, Juanfvelez and Kilmany-Jo Liversage

Medellin, hometown of Pablo Escobar is a place of violence, beauty and intrigue!
Driving from the airport, a good 40 minutes away, I was swept away by the lush tropical vegetation of being close to the equator. My taxi driver came to a halt after 15 minutes of driving and got out of the car, mumbled a few words in Spanish and disappeared under the bonnet…needless to say, the fear of being kidnapped or attacked by the Communistic Gorillas or Para-Militars was very real and I wished for a miracle!. We started descending into the Valley of Medellin or “the Boiling Pot” which locals call it. Medellin is surrounded by mountains and the geography of the State of Antioquia is extremely mountainous which makes travelling very difficult and tedious! Two million people and 220 neighbourhoods make up the urban area of Medellin. Due to the domestic wars which followed the War of Independence, refugees were forced to settle in the surrounding mountains of Medellin.
On my two month residency, funded by Unesco-Aschberg with the Centro Colombo Americano, I did workshops on the urban element of visual art: graffiti. The two local artists I would be conducting the workshops with were, Juan Fernando Velez and Juan Arturo Piedrahita. We could not classify our intervention as graffiti as it was not illegal. A wall was provided and the workshops were funded.
The workshops were called “Grafismos” and were based on the concept of combining plastic arts with graffiti. We did workshops with fine art students from the Antioquia University and design students from the University of Pontificia Bolivariana. International and National Institutions funded this project such as the Comfandi in Cali, Centro Colombo Americano in Manisales, Medellin and the minister of Culture, UNESCO-Paris. The director of the Botanical Garden of Medellin welcomed this project and assigned a 300metre wall for us to work on the wall of the botanical garden was erected in 1915 and would be broken down this year, 2005. The subject matter of graffiti images ranged from conservational awareness, urban messages, subversive symbols and popular icons. We also included other creative elements associated with graffiti at the opening of the wall with an electro-tango concert featuring the popular Argentinean band bajofondo . The one question which was frequently asked in all the workshops was: “if graffiti is an illegal art form, why are we doing graffiti on legal walls? Is this truly graffiti?”
Juan Alberto Gaviria, the Art Director of the Paul Bardwell Gallery of the Centro Colombo Americano reacts to this statement and generally on the grafismos workshops:“Graffiti is Public Art. Graffiti in a public space has a connotation of subversion and prohibition against the law. Formally, this proposal intended to evade the process of academic execution. However, the result of this phenomenon of graffiti was created by the interpretation of students from the Universities of Pontificia Bolivariana and Antioquia who where anxious to familiarise themselves with the technique labelled ‘underground’. The results of these workshops with the students of the mentioned universities are exhibited in several institutions as Comfandi, Cali, and the Centro Colombo Americano of Manizales and at the exterior walls of the Botanical Garden in Medellin. Why incorporate graffiti with academics as it has a principle of violation of the law in which “action” is an essential constituent of risk undertaken by the grafitero at night, as well as remaining anonymous? The ultimate plan was to possess characteristics and essential elements which are beneficial to the results of Graffiti. The ‘grafitero’ aims to make an effective language in simple execution of style in the streets which is coherent with the digital generation and the alteration of thought processes in modern society.”
Walking in the streets of Medellin and Cali, the visual language of graffiti is directed strongly at social, political and urban injustices aimed at the ongoing Civil War in Colombia. Cali, specifically, as the taxi driver commented, is like Medellin in the 80’s.In the 1980’s, Colombia agreed to a treaty authorising the extradition to the United States of narcotics traffickers accused of crimes in the country. This sparked widespread violence within Colombia and the drug cartels demonstrated their opposition with acts of brutal violence, assassinations and kidnappings of prominent judicial and political leaders who supported sending suspects off to the U.S.
We also did projects with the youth from the communas, which is the same as the townships in South Africa. Medellin is a city surrounded by poor refugees forced to flee their homelands because of civil war. Colombia is governed by communistic groups such as the Para-militars and Gorillas. In these neighborhoods, violence is part of life and the youth don’t know any better! Graffiti would take their minds off the days struggle! We worked in two neighborhoods called Altos de la Torro and Pacifico. We had to be invited to these hoods by the head of each community and the youth painted the main stairway of each. Stencil work and painting were encouraged and small children were hungry to participate. Specific symbols associated with social issues of the community were painted such as need for water and peace in the neighborhoods.

me and Pierre