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Penny Siopis’ intaglio print series “Shame” is currently on view at David Krut Publishing Fine Art & Books.

The works are small (45cm x 38cm) but forceful and when viewed in this intimate space, are both alluring and distressing. The images are powerfully loaded: while the colour red draws one in, the content repulses and disturbs. The simple titles of the prints belie the tragedy of the images. The content of the “Shame” series deals with rape, the abuse of power, psychological trauma, damage, torture and agony. The viewer is confronted with images of gross violation and devastating injustice, which evoke strong emotive responses of desperation and outrage.

The prints are produced by the laying down of photocopy transfers and various etching techniques in stages. This layering process is emblematic of the layering in the content of the images portrayed, whilst the sticky, tacky, odorous and acidic substances used in the printing process can be considered metaphoric of the difficult subject matter dealt with.

The “Shame” series relates to other works by Siopis that deal with the same subject in different media. The girl-child who is ‘shamed’, ‘humiliated’, ‘disgraced’ and ‘embarrassed’ illustrates what the artist refers to as the “poetics of vulnerability”. In the print Sorry the child is naked but for a thin blood-stained cloth draped over her back and is bending down in an incredibly vulnerable and compromising position. Where your mom is shows the traumatised child lying unresponsive as the mother looks on. Home depicts the helpless child swept up in a whirlwind of blood and chaos. Don’t you cry pictures a little girl next to a large, evil and frightening head of a man – the gentle comfort of the title stands in direct opposition to the uncomfortable image. Hush little baby and Shame show a figure throwing up, a physical reaction to their trauma, a dreadful expulsion of filth.

The content of these prints illustrates the realities of rape and abuse in South African society, but they also point to abuse of power generally, highlighting the global atrocities of victimisation. The images weigh heavily on one’s heart and social conscience. We are collectively stained and shamed. Siopis says that she tries to “figure vulnerability both as painful and as a potentially transformative experience – it is often only through the effects of our own vulnerability that we recognise the vulnerability of others”.

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