Rachel Founded Real Stories Gallery Foundation (501c)3 and the online art and storytelling initiative www.real-stories-gallery.org in 2009. RSG's collaborative initiatives include: I Believe You, Show Me Your Life (2010), Tristan's Moon (2011) and T.I.M (2012). For further information please contact: http://www.realstoriesgallery@gmail.com
Rachel completed her PhD and BA (First Class) in Social Anthropology at S.O.A.S (School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London). Her thesis - '"It's rude to interrupt when someone is speaking..." explored the imagery, stories and language in the moments contemporary artists created their work, and how their images and ideas were presented and received by a wider audience within the context of Africa 95's National Museums, Galleries and University Forums in the UK. Rachel focused on the work created by 21 artists associated with the Pamoja International Sculpture Workshop at the Henry Moore Yorkshire Sculpture Park and in London at Gasworks Artists Studio / Residency program. She was sponsored by The British Council in 1996 for her follow up research in Botswana among the Thapong International Artists' Workshop artists.
Prior to this Rachel completed a design course at The London College of Furniture, where she received a National Design Bursary Award and undertook an holography course with Professor Martin Richardson, PhD RCA. Rachel worked for several years as a senior designer & project coordinator for Steve Simons, the creative director at the award winning museum and exhibition design practice http://www.eventcomm.com
Rachel was born in Singapore and raised among The British Army Gurkha Regiments. She has lived and worked in Europe and Asia, and traveled extensively. Since her teenage years, Rachel has been influenced by the philanthropic and human rights work of The Gurkha Welfare Trust, Open Society Foundations, Survival International, Amnesty International and Anti-Slavery International. Today Rachel lives in New York where she raises her four children and supports The I.D.E.A.L School of Manhattan (Individualized Education for All Learners).
Welcome to Real Stories Gallery
Many years ago I had the good fortune of working closely with an artist who changed my life in many profound ways. Reinata Sadhimba was a proud Makonde sculptor from Mozambique; a determined survivor of wars, a mother who had suffered the tumultuous loss of six of her eight children, and a visual story-teller who used the power of form to convey social choices. Reinata made many works during our time together; through them, I learnt about her stories and her experiences. In the final days we shared, Reinata created and named her sculpture Ujamaa, which loosely translates as Community Life, Togetherness and Unity.
Ujamaa was formed as a work in progress; a story created, inspired and re-created in direct response to the audience's reactions mingling with Reinata's thoughts, feelings and knowledge. Ujamaa is the expression which returns to me, as I think about what we are trying to do on Real Stories Gallery.
Our initiative has been inspired by the many voices of artists concerned for their friends and neighbours dealing daily with the spread of HIV. I believe the Ujamaa of visual arts and storytelling on www.real-stories-gallery.org, our collective view and perceptions of HIV/AIDS, will make visible unexpected possibilities and expand access to urgent HIV prevention. Artists and their stories will bring empathy to the cause, since the scourge of HIV exists within their own communities and amongst their friends and colleagues around the world.
Reinata used to call me "Reinata Ndyoko" (Little Reinata) as she determinedly placed my tentative feet within her storytelling footprints. I feel, with the help of all my friends on Real Stories Gallery and with Reinata's spirit watching over me, that today I have begun my journey.
**A & U Magazine Article (Feb 2011) about the creation of Real Stories Gallery: http://aumag.org/wordpress/?p=1132
Reinata Sadhimba: Ujamaa (Community Life / Together / Unity), 1995.
(Based on extract from PhD thesis, 2000)
Whilst creating Ujamaa, Reinata improvised with gestures, singing and obscene attitudes with the sole purpose to solicit much laughter and teasing amongst the women working alongside her within the studio at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, U.K.
Each day whilst Reinata worked on Ujamaa, she would call over the female artists working alongside her, and myself. As we gathered around the dominant mother's clay body, the emerging and intertwined small cameos of men, women and children, that covered the large female form, began to emerge and playfully poke fun at taboo and laugh at the coyness of modesty. Reinata's stories summoned slowly a tumble of characters that over the four days became absorbed into our imaginations and memories - as they scurried and giggled, and writhed and moaned with pleasure; as they teased the spirits within forbidden places, and rhythmically gorged themselves on excrement whilst fulfilling each other with orgasmic sexual pleasure.
Intuitively grasping the sense of Reinata's storytelling, her audience became an integral part of the performance. Our reactions and responses acted as a catalyst to both further embellish her storytelling and afterwards, to give rise to the birth and creation of innovative new clay characters and cameos, which breathed more surprises and further life into Ujamaa.
Reinata yearned to create a story that teased the boundaries of what could be spoken. And her audience during those four days, yearned to hear it. As her story gained pace and energy, drawing us all together through singing, drumming, clapping and movement, it flashed with outrageous gestures and sexual imaginings. Until we had all laughed and gasped and been teased and laughed some more. Until it was too painful, too exhausting and too ridiculous to continue on for that particular day.
On the final morning Reinata worked on Ujamaa, she discussed condoms for the first time. Her purposefully awkward opening of the small packet to explore the condom, gave rise to hugely funny joking as she began to incorporated the concept within her storytelling; expanding her thoughts into a full-blown performance, a grand finale, with the sole intention to evoke utter astonishment and outraged merriment. That was, until - a curious male artist drawn by the hullabaloo, appeared at the studio entrance.
Instantly, we all stopped, hid the condom from view and nonchalantly welcomed our friend with decorum. There was absolutely no difference in our instant and collective response. No difference - given the disparity in our ages, socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds. There had, I realize, been no difference in our collective mothers' teachings. Condoms and explicit stories about sexual acts are not easy to share within a social forum. They are not easy to abruptly introduce and to speak about, even when you know the listener very well indeed. In a moment when HIVAIDS has claim the lives of 60 Million People (the living and the dead), and affects the lives of hundreds of millions of family members, friends and colleagues, it makes huge sense for us to rethink the TABOO associated with the social sexual human being; and the cruelty directed towards millions of our neighbours whose lives are infected and affected by the retrovirus known colloquially in English as H.I.V.. For if we do not do something to alleviate the stress and trauma taking place today and our watch, our humanity is surely dying of embarrassment.
In my experience, visual arts and storytelling often allow friends, old or new, to slowly slide a little more easily into uncomfortable subjects and to explore new thoughts. In my experience, there are many kinds of works of art and many kinds of stories. Getting to know them over the years has led me to glimpse, and so often pause to consider, alternative ways for me to both think about and to imagine possible choices I may make within my own life; and for those of my young children.
