Artist creates awareness of human trafficking
“I’m trying to send a message that human beings are not for sale. People are not products. They are not commodities that can be exchanged for cash.”
Daveyton artist Matla Kheola has dedicated his artistry to highlighting issues affecting women.
He also underlined the vital role indigenous games, played by rural and township children, can have in making subjects such as maths easier for primary school learners.
Kheola was one of the many local creative artists who exhibited their works at the #EkurhuleniArtsShowcase on March 18 in Daveyton.
Influenced by his life experiences and the everyday life in black communities, Kheola’s most impressive work deals with often overlooked suffering and violence experienced by women in South Africa.
In one of his paintings, which addresses human trafficking in the country, Kheola captures the imagination with his use of colour to disseminate his message.
According to last year’s Trafficking in Persons annual report, human trafficking had more than doubled from April 2021 to March 2022.
In this work, the craftsman depicts a naked woman with legs tied by a yellow rope. She is against a black background with splashes of red, blue and white, showing that traffickers can be anyone, including those close to us.
The emotional message of the work is a tag that reads, ‘I’m not for sale’. It dangles from the woman’s wrist, which according to Kheola, shows the price human traffickers placed on their victims.
“I’m trying to send a message that human beings are not for sale. People are not products. They are not commodities to be exchanged for cash,” he said.
He said he used black to show the darkness the victims fall into, while the red represented their feelings and blood.
The blue represents the coldness they feel when left defenceless and naked, and the yellow rope depicts their struggle for freedom.
“The yellow represents freedom and peace. They are fighting to be free, which has left their ankles, as shown in the painting, swollen from their struggle to set themselves free.
“The tightness of the rope shows that without a joint effort from society to fight this, human trafficking is inescapable,” said Kheola.
Advocate for education
Some of Kheola’s lighter works take one down memory lane.
The artist thinks using indigenous games such as dibeke, diketo, and morabaraba can help make learning easier for learners.
Drawn on a brown canvas depicting the dusty streets where the games are played, the pieces show a group of children enjoying themselves.
“These are influenced by my childhood memories. They are games we used to play as children, and they educated us about mathematics because we had to do calculations to advance to the next stage.
“The horizontal lines are from school books, and the red colour, which I spread haphazardly, represents the sweat and blood that flows while engaged in these games.”
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