Paul Stopforth returns to South Africa for a residency on Robben Island
by Kresta Tyler Johnson
Paul Stopforth has been returning to South Africa periodically since he and his wife left for the US in 1988. At the time, disillusioned by yet another State of Emergency, Stopforth took the opportunity to work at Tufts for a year with the assistance of Kim Berman and has never looked back.
Even though it proved only two short years before Mandela was released, this was enough time to establish a new life. Stopforth's future would be in the States, where his persona as a resistance artist evolved as a result of his new culture and experiences.
Elderly parents brought Stopforth back to South Africa for visits, but it was only last year that he made his first sojourn to Robben Island. The experience proved overpowering and lit the spark that culminated in his recent two week residency on the Island. Working with the directors of the Island, a stagnant artist-in-residence programme was reborn. Stopforth's proposal, which was quickly accepted, was to spend two weeks allowing himself to be engaged with the history of the Island.
Stopforth had to bring all his own materials and rent a warden's house. He also agreed to teach a workshop to CAP students and give a talk at the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island. However, this wasn't much to pay for an opportunity to work on the Island.
When I asked Stopforth about his desire to work on Robben Island, he explained how for him the essential and apparent changes that all South Africa has experienced are embodied by the island. The spaces he encountered were evocative of the deep history of South Africa, which extended beyond apartheid, to colonial times. He discussed in particular the remains of a bathing pool for women lepers he encountered. The hope he saw that this former bath possessed for healing was so shockingly beautiful, that even if the waters that once flowed through the pools did not heal themselves, the spaces and environment certainly would.
In the time of his residency Stopforth spent many hours walking the island, drawing and ingesting what surrounded him. After his residency, Stopforth took his drawings and ideas to master printer Mark Atwood and created a series of four prints. I was fortunate to see some of the results, and I was shocked by the incredible beauty Stopforth found in the most mundane objects. From the trash can in Mandela's cell to a hinge on a door, the objects are made sacred, iconic items that evoked the transition and transformation of both the island and South Africa.
Stopforth currently teaches at Harvard University, where he has been for the past eight years. I asked him if he had any regrets about leaving South Africa. He quietly reflected for a moment and said that leaving was a lesson in permanence. While it was sad to leave South Africa, you can never deny or leave where you come from.
Upon his arrival in the US, he experienced the sudden loss of clearly defined good and evil as a framework for creation and a new prevalence of ambiguity. With the freedom to create what an artist wanted also came the taxing decisions of how to know and decide what to create.
Living in the US, Stopforth feels, has allowed him room for explorations and to breathe. He finds anonymity and freedom for imaginative space that he does not sense exists in a the more confined environment of South Africa.
Stopforth concluded that you work with what you've got and that is the best you can do. I was inspired by his eloquence and confidence and found another insightful voice bringing attention to the achievements of contemporary South African art, both here and abroad.
