Exhibit portrays stigmas about albinism
ROBYN Larkin’s intriguing exhibition at the Athenaeum is a harrowing look at the lives of persons with albinism – this term, abbreviated to PWA is preferred to “albinos” – on their home soil of Africa.
As Larkin writes in her notes to Skin Deep, the daily experience of PWA is one of “isolation, lack of knowledge and understanding as well as deep superstition” and the statistics she cites give a chilling insight into why.
The Under the Same Sun Foundation’s December report for last year, for example, revealed that over a number of years there were 177 physical attacks against PWA in Tanzania, by far the worst on the continent. South African hands are not clean either, however, with eight attacks on record.
Albinism is a non-contagious, genetically inherited condition which occurs in all ethnicities and genders, Larkin writes. Except for the West African country of Benin where PWA are treated with the utmost respect, the reverse is true across most of Africa.
Their pale colour is also viewed as a curse from the ancestors in some countries and children, in particular newborns, are often killed. There sometimes is a belief that they do not die, they simply disappear as they are ghosts.
In Tanzania, there are witch doctors who believe the limbs of a PWA are extremely valuable as muti, and body parts may be stolen from their graves.
Single mothers raise a large number of PWA due to the misconception that the child was the result of infidelity with a white man. In some countries they are called “zeruzeru”, which translates to “nothing-nothing”.
Over and above this discrimination, many PWA do not live long lives, as their pale skins are extremely vulnerable to sun damage in the form of cancer.
Larkin hopes her work will give “a platform for introspection into the everyday lives of the victims of this violence and stigma . . . to allow for quiet reflection on the experiences of this minority group”.