Weaving the threads

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

It all started in a mud bath on the Italian island of Vulcano. “I was chatting to an American woman I’d just met, and I mentioned that I make conceptual art and lace,” recalls Lieberman. “She asked if I’d heard of Judge Ginsburg – also known as RBG. She told me that she wears lace collars to make political, feminist statements. You can just imagine the shivers I had. So many of the concepts she spoke of I embed in my lace works. I knew I had to make RBG a lace collar. I immediately also knew how it would look, and the concepts it would convey – the same concepts with which she imbues her own collars.”

On her return to South Africa, Lieberman shared her plan with former Judge Albie Sachs, with whom she also has a special connection. “I first met Sachs on a beach,” recalls Lieberman. “I told him I’d like to donate a work to the Constitutional Court, and that’s how Constellations came about.” Painted on postage stamp paper, Constellations depicts 18 different people each connected to the court from the judges, including Sachs, to the tea lady, and the car guard outside. All 18 figures – a number chosen because it signifies chai (life) –  are painted in blood red oils and are linked by a blood red silk thread. Constellations has been hung in the court since 2009.

Years after completing the work, Lieberman read Sachs’s book, The Free Diary of Albie Sachs. In it, he writes, “I reflect to myself that relationships on the court are so intricate that each individual profoundly affects the total dynamic. This is the story I would love to write one day, capturing the way that ideas emerge like strands of silk from the bodies and minds and personalities of each one of us.”

“It looks like I made that work for that quote, but I read it four years after I’d completed it. Amazing!” says Lieberman. She maintains regular contact with Sachs, and is working on a sculpture for Constitution Hill.

“Within five minutes of my mail about RBG, Albie wrote back to me saying this was wonderful news,” says Lieberman. “Not only does he have a very special relationship with her, but she also wrote the foreword for Art and Justice a book on the art collection of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in which Constellations is featured. We’re all so connected.” What’s more, that same week, RBG was featured in the SA Jewish Report, and RBG, a documentary about her life was screened at the Bioscope in Maboneng in celebration of Women’s Month – it was August at the time. Sachs asked Lieberman if she could have the lace collar ready by November, and offered to deliver it to RBG himself during a scheduled trip to the United States. Practicalities and her vision of a white silk collar aligned, and Lieberman met the deadline.

Discussing the collar, Lieberman talks about the history of lace, which reflects the societal inequalities of 17th and 18th century Europe. “In those days, it was illegal for peasants to wear lace,” she says. “Peasants were the lace makers, yet lace was worth more than gold, and only royalty and above was allowed to wear it.”

Lieberman is currently working on a series of artworks called “Why the Collar”, which questions why people frame the head. It questions whose heads we are framing now, here in Africa. “I believe that royal thought – which to me means integrity, values, leadership – can come from anyone, it’s not blood driven,” says Lieberman. “I’m challenging that European concept of only royals wearing lace.” The work includes people like Judge Yvonne Mgoro, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, and Sachs himself, but not all her models are famous. “There’s amazing young people in this country,” says Lieberman. “The work ties into RBG wearing lace collars as a political statement, wearing it like jewellery, a neck-lace as it was worn in the olden days.”

Reflecting on why she responded so strongly to RBG, Lieberman says, “She’s been challenging and transforming gender-based laws and perceptions for decades. At 85, she must have been pivotal at the start of the feminist era. She has continued to press issues of that nature. It seems like people celebrate her integrity and her stance, and what must be the dignified yet fierce way she has had to uphold and place her value system.

“Her use of the lace collar was the link to me reading up about her, at a time when what she stands for is fuelled by the politics that abound. She’s not only been a feminist, but also fights for gender rights – it’s about fairness. Her path allowed her not only to stand her ground, but to fill very influential positions where she helped to mould human rights. That fascinated me because I’m very interested in influence and integrity. Her reason for wearing a collar is a fit with my reason for making lace. Lace is not utilitarian, it’s about presence, about who you are as a human being. I’ve been writing about this for years, and she’s doing it. The concepts I explore within artworks, she’s activating.”

For Lieberman, having Sachs deliver the collar was a natural link in the thread. “I respect Albie deeply. He’s an elegant human being in his integrity, and he was one of the people who wrote our brilliant Constitution. Albie told me that RBG loves our Constitution. Her connection with Albie and my connection with Albie was quite amazing, and I was very happy to go that route. My relationship with Albie is so easy and open. Then, he has this historic connection with RBG, and they are both connected in similar ways to their own courts. They make laws, they’re guiders, what they do is good for human beings.”

In an email, Sachs told Lieberman of RBG’s reaction to her unexpected gift. “She gasped, literally gasped,” he wrote. “She felt and touched the necklace, placed it round her neck, and put it back on the soft, dark cushion. She said she wasn’t sure if she would wear it or display it as an artwork.

“While I’d have loved to have seen a visual, the way Albie wrote about it was better than a picture. It was more emotive,” says Lieberman. “I like the way the story unfolded.”