A Touching Exhibition From The Townships of Cape Town

Have you ever heard of First Thursdays in Cape Town?

If you are roaming around in Cape Town city center on the first Thursday of any month, you will notice an unusual crowd. All the galleries that you didn't even know they existed will be open to visitors until late hours. There will be dance shows, exhibitions, jam sessions and happy hours at almost every corner. The streets will turn into runways, with people wearing their fanciest clothes possible. However, during the last one I attended, I visited an exhibition that came across as rather striking and touching.

One of the biggest highlights of this free public event is a gallery called Young Blood, founded in 2010. To read more about this gallery, click here. This is the place that hosts the most remarkable exhibitions of the event. That's why, I always make sure to stop by here and check out what wonders they created for that month.

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The three-storey building usually has a different exhibition on every floor. Last month's exhibition on the top floor was full of puppets. These puppets were all made of regular household goods like plastic bottles, jars, cloth, aluminum and many more.

They all had super hero tags with explanations.

The puppets of this exhibition were created at Super Hero Puppet Workshop in Muizenberg under a project called Butterfly Art Project. The VANSA (Visual Arts Network of South Africa) organization helped the kids of surrounding townships join the workshops. The puppets showcased at Young Blood were created by the collaboration of the community members and the kids. Details can be found here.

Each super hero puppet had its own story, which was obviously left to the imagination of the kids. Each tag contained information about the childhood of the puppet, how it gained the super power, how it used that super power in favor of humanity and its worst enemy.

Although the descriptions were mostly hilarious and creative, they all had some common features that were thought-provoking. Most of the super-hero puppets were bullied extensively during childhood. Again, most of them lost their parents and relatives at a young age. So, the vast majority of these "super heroes" aimed to help other kids who suffered from the same circumstances. In other words, the life stories of these puppets depicted what the children of townships went-through and how it shaped them.

This one lost his parents during a gang during gang violence, so now he is fighting against it.

This one lost its grandmother when she was burnt alive by the people of the township who claimed she was a witch. Now she is fighting against ignorance.

This one's worst enemy was slow wifi. I feel you, girl!

On the other end of the room there was another exhibition that belonged to a 14 year old teenager. He migrated to South Africa with his parents from DRC. They were allocated to a township, where they faced severe xenophobia. His pictures depicted the difficulties he had as a child.

He was there to greet people and answer their questions along with her mother.

This is just one of the many meaningful exhibitions in Cape Town. I seriously look forward to the First Thursdays, not because it's the time of the month everybody goes out to party like animals, but because I learn something from them.

Hasta la Proxima!