24. Nov 2005 16:04 9. Oct 2006 13:32

From Cape Town to the Women and Children's Centre

Beadwork animals from the MonkeyBiz project have been bought for the new Women and Children's Centre at St. Olavs Hospital. The attractive bead animals will be part of the decoration of the centre. 

MonkeyBiz – unique contemporary art

More than 400 women in the townships around Cape Town make a living from creating beadwork figures for MonkeyBiz . The women work at home, and receive the beads free of charge. Each Friday it is “Bead Market Day” in the middle of Cape Town centre, where the women artists sell their work to MonkeyBiz. The colours and designs have been chosen by the artists, who also sign their works.

The proceeds are used to create more jobs. An advisory service for people living with HIV and AIDS is linked with the MonkeyBiz project. The bead figures have been exhibited in London and New York galleries, and they are sold at well-known designer outlets. In this way, the townships provide inspiration for the contemporary art of our world.

The antelope from Khayelitsha
A story by Hilde Katrine Eriksen

"I'm sitting here in our house of planks and corrugated iron, like all the other houses in our township. Here in Khayelitsha - in Cape Town, South Africa.

I have no mother. Not many of my friends have mothers. Our mothers are dead, from AIDS. I live with my grandmother. Others live with neighbours, relations or friends.

My grandmother makes lovely bead animals. I dream of being one of them. The beads sparkle and glow. I dream of living among the bead animals, the shimmering antelopes, zebras and gnus of the imagination. The elephant lifts his trunk over his head; I dream I am sitting on his back. We ride northward over the plains. I wave happily at all the patterned, striped and checked friends travelling with us, with their long necks, elegant horns, straight backs. We are a flock of laughing creatures, with beads glittering in all the colours of the rainbow. We rest under the acacia tree until the darkness wraps around us. Then we snuggle up together, close, close. And we sleep, in the African night. The day that follows is blessed by the beads. T hey blaze in the burning sunrise. They are the treasure of the mind, the joy of the spirit.

My grandmother sells the animals on bead-market day. Those who buy the bead animals say they are sent far away, much further than my thoughts can reach. That doesn't surprise me. I know that the bead animals travel. They are made to travel. One day I will go there too. To the place where the bead animals are."