SA's Dirty Laundry and The Things We Do for Love: Love and artivism as process-protest

Abstract

abstractTake a walk in my shoes by allowing yourself to shed your defences and put your underwear on the line … SA's Dirty Laundry is an artivism (art plus activism) campaign that took the call for re-introduced and re-viewed forms of protest to heart, by using art to bring awareness to the issue of rape.The artivism: 3600 pairs of underwear hang on a washing line of 1.2 km, over the city of Johannesburg's Maboneng precinct – used underwear donated by people across the country as a means to share their story or support of surviving rape. A womxn puts her body on the line by stripping off the layers of clothing that en-role her as an object because of her gender, taking off layer after layer of soiled white panties until she stands in the street, naked, with only a childhood panty as covering. Visual artist Jenny Nijenhuis and performance artist Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga respectively collaborated to host, with SoMa Art + Space, an exhibition plus street performances under the title The Things We Do for Love. Love being understood as a revolutionary sentiment that demands action, as various notable revolutionaries have espoused. The artivism featured works by womxn students from the University of the Witwatersrand, questioning presence in protest performance (art, reality). SA's Dirty Laundry asks South Africans to see their own story in one of the 3600 pieces of dirty underwear. It introduces a new protest language – art – a present tense.This profile piece reviews the project and discusses whether art, when used for the purpose of socio-political activism, has the power and ability to shift the status quo. It discusses the potential and problems encountered by the initiative, and proposes art as a feminist language aimed at bringing a message to people on the street.