Upright.Be is a project carried by Muyira - Arts et Mémoire based on the concept of Upright Men conceived by the artist Bruce Clarke. A permanent figure of an Upright Men has been painted on the facade of a building in Brussels. Twenty-five years after the Rwandese genocide, this work aims to commemorate its victims.
The work can be seen at 34-36 rue du Meiboom - Meiboomstraat in 1000 Brussels and is part of the PARCOURS Street Art of the City of Brussels.
The official unveiling of the mural painting took place on Tuesday April 23rd 2019 at 2:00 PM, in the presence of Mrs. Delphine Houba, the alderwoman of Culture of the City of Brussels; HE Mr. Amandin Rugira, Ambassador of Rwanda in Belgium; Mr. Frédéric Jacquemin, director of Africalia and the artist Bruce Clarke.
Upright Men is a contemporary art project conceived by the visual artist Bruce Clarke in memory of the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi. The project will involve painting larger-than-life figures – up to 10 metres high – of men, women and children at memorial sites and elsewhere. These figures should strike passers-by as silent yet incarnate images, rough yet definite outlines, anonymous yet familiar characters; symbols of human dignity faced with the dehumanisation of genocide. The intention is to give back a presence to those who were lost and restore individuality to the victims.
Mural art has the benefit of being able to reach a wide audience. The work is intended to raise questions rather than to provide answers. Art’s incredible ability to make viewers reflect is perhaps the best remedy for non-remembrance. These artistic representations are a weapon against forgetfulness as much as they are an echo of the battle itself. Works of art of every type and from every period play such a role in constructing memory that sometimes, years after, they remain the only residual trace of an occurrence.
Bruce Clarke was born in London in 1959 to two South African activists who had gone into exile in 1958. He studied Fine Arts at Leeds University in the UK before settling in Paris in the late 1980s. He fought apartheid with his art and his paintbrushes, taking part in the exhibition Art Against Apartheid alongside well-known artists such as Hervé Di Rosa and Ernest Pignon-Ernest. Like the latter, Bruce Clarke is a militant, engaged artist who is constantly aware of the social role of art and its intimate links with politics.
This project is one of the laureates of the Africalia’s 2018 call for proposals.
