Colored prayers, Imithandazo enembibala, Gekleurde gebede

We came upon this, clothes flapping in the breeze, laundry hung out to dry on a line zig zagging down a pretty alleyway in the middle of downtown Stellenbosch.   We stood and debated, was this real, some family’s clothes hung on a line here in town, in the tourist district, high up by the second floor?   They were real clothes.  Ordinary, very usable, real clothes.  Real clothes pins.    But it made no sense.  The lines were barely in reach of windows, and the lines were fixed, no pulleys to crank the clothes out and in.   And really, why would laundry be hanging in a commercial district?  We came to the conclusion it must be art.    

It incensed my kids. Especially Quince.  Why would someone waste perfectly good clothes like this when a person could be wearing them.  “Look at that cute little flowered skirt.   I would wear that!”  And how stupid to have all those clothes pretend drying on the line up there when there are so many people down here who need clothes.   I get why it made no sense to her.  I get why she hated it.  I get why it made her angry. 

But I loved it.   I loved  the movement, and the colors and the patterns.   The patterns on individual clothes and the patterns of them all together.   The shapes they made hanging there.  How the breeze caught the clothes and transformed them into new shapes.   A dress puffing up with air, suddenly becoming a twirling bell.  I loved how the blue sky and white buildings played their part.

Above all, though, I loved that this artist invited us to seek beauty in the ordinary.  To be present for the beauty in the moment.  To open ourselves to the richness that is everyday.

P.S.  I also get why the woman who washes and hangs some other family’s laundry for a living, and then goes home and does the same for her own family, likely by hand, might find this the most ridiculous idea of art ever.   We know life is not black and white, but grey. . .  and very, very colorful. 

Colored prayers, Imithandazo enembibala, Gekleurde gebede

The artist, Jacques Coetzer,  says, “A drive through the country side is often meditative, with mountains, field and sky drifting past.   Occasionally a flash of colour will sign domestic life, washing hung outside on a fence outside a homestead or labourers’ cottages.  Merrily blown about, strings of brightly hued clothing connect people and landscape, and so the very ordinary and intimate becomes public. Clotheslines, like prayer flags, can be imagined to send out personal mediations on the wind.”