Bruce Clarke

Debout.Be, street art in memory of the victims of the genocide in Rwanda

Stand Up.Be

Men on their feet is a contemporary art project conceived by the visual artist Bruce Clarke in memory of the victims of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The project aims to paint larger-than-life figures of men, women and children - up to 10 metres high - at places of remembrance and elsewhere. These figures will appear to passers-by as silent but embodied images, silhouettes sketched but assertive, anonymous but familiar characters, symbols of the dignity of human beings confronted with the dehumanisation implied by the genocide. The intention is to give a presence back to the disappeared and to restore the individuality of the victims.

Wall art has the advantage of being accessible to everyone. Its purpose is to provoke questions in the viewer, not to answer them. This astonishing ability of the work of art to question the viewer is perhaps the best remedy against amnesia. Artistic representations are as much a weapon against forgetting as they are an echo of the battle itself. Works of art, whatever their nature or period, help to build memory, sometimes to the point of being the sole marker of an event years later.

Presentation of the project sponsors

Muyira - Arts and Memory is a Belgian non-profit organisation whose activities focus on two main areas. The first concerns the memory of the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. Muyira offers a range of educational approaches using artistic expression as a means of transmitting and reflecting on these crimes. The association extends its activities to the fight against all forms of racism, xenophobia, sexism and homophobia. The second focus of the association's activities is artistic creation and dissemination in various forms.

Born in London in 1959 to South African activists exiled in 1958, Bruce Clarke studied Fine Art at Leeds University in the UK before moving to Paris in the late 1980s. He fights apartheid with his art and his brushes. He took part in the "Art Against Apartheid" exhibition, alongside artists such as Hervé Di Rosa and Ernest Pignon-Ernest. Like Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Bruce Clarke is a militant and committed artist who never ceases to question the social role of art and its political implications.