Amahoro Yongeye (Peace is Restored)
BEGUN WITH GENOCIDE SURVIVORS
Sara’s Amahoro Yongeye series of mixed media paintings was begun during a workshop she ran with genocide survivors in the Nyanza district of Rwanda’s Southern Province. With the participants’ permission, Sara took their finished artwork back to her UK studio to rework and reconstruct. The series Amahoro Yongeye (‘Peace is Restored’ in Kinyarwanda) is the outcome, the titles of each of the 3 pieces being the quadriptych Broken; What we lost we are rebuilding (work in progress); Living in Peace. A poster version of the collection – once finished – will be gifted to the Nyanza women to hang on the wall of their workplace. [See scroll of workshop images and the creative process below].
The workshop participants consisted of 14 women – 7 genocide survivors and 7 wives of genocide perpetrators. They belong to the social enterprise Umucyo Nyanza (‘Nyanza Light’), which creates and sells high quality clothes and artefacts from Kitenge fabric. Continuing to work with bold pattern and colour, Sara facilitated the women to collaboratively draw and paint on large rolls of paper with oil pastels and acrylic paint washes. When the paper reached colour- and pattern-saturation point, Sara cut it into 14 pieces, inviting the women at the end of the session to rearrange into a more pleasing and interesting format. A metaphor for their lives, the creative process of deconstructing and reconstructing their artwork, instilled a sense of collective optimism and hope. Whilst life can be torn apart by traumatic events and circumstances, we have the choice to put it back together again – slowly and intentionally. The outcome can be an enriched and resilient existence, even better than before.
The women of Umucyo Nyanza came together through the shared purpose of reconciliation, strengthening relationships and meeting economic need. Since 2014, they have been involved in a range of training, including trauma healing, forgiveness and truth telling. For further reading, see Arts Lab project Smiles for Genocide Survivors.
Sara took the photographs shown below with the kind permission of the women of Umucyo Nyanza.
