AIDS-inspired altarpiece begins U.S. tour

CHICAGO -- As the twin scourges of AIDS and unemployment ravaged their rural district, the women of the South African fishing village of Hamburg decided to fight back with the weapons they were given: embroidery needles.\nWhat began as their simple plan to earn money for medicine through handicrafts has led to the creation of several massive and elaborate communal artworks -- the most recent of which is on display above the altar of Chicago's St. James Episcopal Cathedral as the first stop of a U.S. tour.\nThe Keiskamma Altarpiece, named after a river that flows past Hamburg, is a huge work -- 13 feet high and 22 feet wide when fully extended. It combines intricate embroidery, applique and beadwork with life-size portrait photography to express both the horrors of the South African AIDS epidemic and the resilience of Hamburg's people.\n"It took more than 120 women and three or four men about six months of full-time work to create this," said the project's originator, Dr. Carol Hofmeyr, as cathedral staff opened the altarpiece like a cupboard to reveal all three of its layers. As she explained the piece's complex multiple images, Hofmeyr also told of how she came to Hamburg and became involved in the artwork.\n"I was trained as a medical doctor and practiced for several years, but I burned out and found I could not stand it any more, so I went back to school and obtained a degree in fine arts," the Johannesburg native said.\nBut in 2000, she moved to Hamburg with her husband, Dr. Justus Hofmeyr, who was opening an AIDS clinic and hospice in the village of 3,000 people, which is 30 miles from the nearest hospital. She soon learned that at least 30 percent of the adult population in the region was HIV-positive and that modern health care was nonexistent.\nEunice Mangwane, 58, a grandmother who volunteered as a counselor at the clinic, said many villagers blamed the affliction on witchcraft or on powder scattered "by a white man in an airplane."\n"When I saw what the people there had to endure ... I went back to practicing medicine, but I also wanted to use art to help people, too," Hofmeyr said.\nNoting that the Xhosa women of the area use geometric needlework to decorate clothing, Hofmeyr thought embroidered items such as pillowcases might be sold to pay for antiviral drugs and other medical care. She enlisted two women from England to teach the village women European embroidery techniques.\n"They learned very fast, and they loved it," she said. "And then they were asking me, 'Can't we do something bigger -- something more important?'"\nWhat they decided on was big, indeed -- an African version of Normandy's famed Bayeux Tapestry. But instead of showing a military action such as the Norman Conquest, the Hamburg tapestry told the epic story of South Africa's Eastern Cape Province from legendary times to the end of apartheid in 1994. That tapestry, hundreds of feet long, now hangs in a government building in Cape Town.