'I want to use art as advocacy': Reflections on the fascinating Insiders vs Outsiders exhibition

EXHIBITION: Insiders vs Outsiders - Thoughts & Dreams

The 'Insiders vs Outsiders - Thoughts and Dreams' exhibition is worth seeing at Lizamore & Associates at the Fire Station in Rosebank, Johannesburg. This is a fascinating reflection of the Cape Winelands-based project, called the Outsider/Insider Prison Art project, run by artist Marieke Kruger, who is passionate about using art to positively effect social change. In this project, she teaches printmaking skills to prisoners at the Drakenstein Correctional Centre and Allandale Correctional Facility in Paarl and the Hawequa Correctional Facility in Wellington. The exhibition is curated by Teresa Lizamore. 

She finds that the printing medium is the most effective one to use, claiming that "it is therapeutic for them… the whole process of carving (woodblocks) or etching into the plates. Art is a way of accessing their unconscious, the things that they suppress; it is a therapy in a way; they are forced to look at themselves… to recognise themselves, and in that sense, it is a kind of self-revelatory process."