Exploring South Africa through art

One good way to learn about a country’s culture, its people and history is to see it through works of art. The embassy of South Africa made school children here do exactly that. Through an art competition held across local schools, the embassy aimed to make South Africa more familiar to people in Qatar and urge them to visit it.The participating students had to research South Africa and aspects of its cultural heritage and natural beauty and they came up with surprisingly realistic portrayals.The top 20 winning students and 3 honorary winners from Al Noor Institute for the Blind were awarded medals at a ceremony held at Virginia Commonwealth University-Qatar (VCU-Q) recently. Hannah Tunstall of Doha College won the first prize with her piece of art and with that two tickets to go visit South Africa.The ambassador of South Africa to Qatar, Saad Cachalia and VCU-Q School of Arts Dean Dr Akel I Kahera distributed the medals and the prizes to the winning students.The Children Art Competition with the theme ‘South Africa as I see it’ was held in September this year. More than 50 local and international schools in Qatar participated in the competition and submitted their artworks to the embassy. The artworks, done around the competition theme, were adjudged by expert art instructors from VCU-Q.“The art was beyond my expectations. It is amazing that students in this age group can be so creative. Being the dean of art of school, I get a chance to look at a lot of artworks. These were very inspirational and I really enjoyed them,” Dr Kahera tells Community in a talk after the awards ceremony.Art, he says, is a very powerful medium. It can convey information about people, their language, heritage and history. Art is just as powerful as writing an article or a book or conducting an interview. It is a medium of communication.“I think these students have used it well. They had to do some research about South Africa so they have had a chance to learn about a foreign country. And in this global world that we live in it is important we understand that everybody has a role to play in the society,” says the VCU-Q Dean.He says the university is always excited about the opportunity to collaborate with all of the embassies here in Qatar. When the South African ambassador came to them, he says, they were really excited about the possibility and rose to the occasion to support and make the initiative a success.“This initiative is clear indication of a part of our mission in Qatar that is to be good community partners to extend our knowledge and help beyond the walls of the school and to reach out to the community,” he added.VCU-Q has been in Qatar for 20 years and is the oldest American institution in the country. During this time, it has graduated over 600 students.“We continue to work to build opportunities to build capacity, to help build this nation, to support what is called knowledge economy and to extend our curriculum in a way that it becomes relevant to the needs of Qatar,” Dr Kahera added.The top 20 entrants received medals. However the winner of the competition, Hannah Tunstall received a floating trophy for her school as well as two air tickets to South Africa with a stay in the country.“The whole idea of this competition is premised on a few things and the chief amongst them is the aim to strengthen the relationship between Qatar and South Africa. We believe that an art competition would allow Qataris’ exposure to South Africa and in return let South Africa open itself to Qataris,” ambassador Cachalia tells Community. “Children at home are the ones who decide where to go on a holiday and influence the parents to go to a particular place. This art competition allowed the children to do some homework on South Africa and better understand it,” he added. The ambassador said the competition made the children learn about a country that they did not know much about and they will now share their information with others. The theme of the competition, he added, also helped the embassy better understand what people think of South Africa and thus improve its tourism efforts. “I believe initiatives like this will open up Qatari visits to South Africa for tourism. Qatar is a great investor in art and we believe we can [generate interest in South Africa through such] competitions,” said ambassador Cachalia. Douw Vermaak, political counsellor at the South African embassy, conducted the awards ceremony. During his introductory speech, Vermaak said the competition was part of the embassy’s outreach efforts to reach to the communities based in Qatar and to introduce them to the people and culture of South Africa. “The theme ‘South Africa as I see it’ encouraged students to research not only South Africa but the African continent on the whole and produce works of art reflecting their impressions of what a visitor to our country would experience,” said Varmaak, explaining to the audience why each piece of art was selected as winner by the judges.The competition was open to children between the ages of 13 and 16. The embassy partnered with Etihad Airways and VCU-Q. The university helped and guided the embassy with the modalities of the competition. “The Ministry of Education in Qatar fully supported the initiative and the number of participating schools went up to 54 from the initial 34 that we had identified and we received over 400 submissions,” Vermaak told the audience.Amal Zen from MES Indian School won the second prize, while Al Jazi Salman al-Sulaiti from Global Academy International School won the third. The honorary winners from Al Noor Institute for Blind included Nawal al-Ansari, Farhana Hafez and Amna Siddiqa.