Hey there. What can we learn from 35 years of social change art making in Johannesburg, South Africa? From the center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Art is Change, a chronicle of art and social change where activists, artists and cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders. I'm Bill Cleveland. So today, something a little different. I want to tell a story I first shared in my book Art and Upheaval. It's a story from South Africa in the years after the end of apartheid, when the country was trying to figure out what democracy would actually mean in everyday life. It's story about artists, but not in the way that we usually tell those stories. Not about one genius, not about one leader, not about one heroic act. It's about a place and a group of people and a way of working that shows how cultural practice can move right into the center of social change. The story begins on Human Rights Day, March 21, 2004, in Johannesburg. A cooling breeze flutters the South African flag above the new Constitutional Court building on Constitution Hill. It's been nearly 10 years since Mandela's election, but many in the crowd gathering for the court's opening are still not used to the sight of the new flag. Six colors joined and apart, rippling in the wind. For South Africa, this is a time of changing history and changing symbols. And here on this hill, the new Constitutional Court stands where a prison once stood. Nearly 100 years earlier, the British built the Johannesburg fort to hold prisoners awaiting trial. During apartheid, its cells held some of the state's most dangerous enemies. Albert Lutuli, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, even Mahatma Gandhi. It's likely that the prison had served more meals to Nobel Peace Prize winners than any hotel in the world. Yeah, and it also served up a lot more pain. The justices who designed the new court made an unusual decision. They insisted that the building itself would have to be a work of art. They understood that the new constitution had grown out of a history where culture, politics, and identity were inseparable. And that if the law was going to survive the rough road ahead, it had to become something people could feel, not just something they were told to obey. So artists were invited to leave their mark on every inch of the building. Paintings, prints, sculpture, glass, stone stories embedded in the walls. One of the artists represented there was Kim Berman, whose prints show township uprisings in the 1980s. Images that felt less like artwork and more like a live news feed from a war zone. Smoke, rubble, armored police vehicles, young people running, women carrying the injured, fists raised in defiance, nothing static, nothing decorative. Every inch of paper burns with fear and rebellion. But the real story doesn't live on the wall. It lives in a print studio a few miles away. In the early 1980s, at the height of apartheid repression, Kim left South Africa for the United States. She'd been part of the student movement, working underground, trying to make art that exposed the violence of the regime. She later said she felt incredibly squeezed living as a white, anti apartheid, Jewish, lesbian artist in a society where difference itself could make you a target. In Boston, she found freedom. But she never felt separate from what was happening at home during the state of emergency. Even drawings showing unrest could get an artist arrested. So she began making prints and artist books from photographs smuggled out of South Africa, trying to give those images a personal voice. Books became a medium of defiance. Images became a way of telling the truth when the truth was banned. Then in 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.

There's Mr. Mandela. Mr. Nelson Mandela, a free man taking his first steps into a new South Africa. This is Winnie Mandela next to him, waving to the crowds,.

Hand in hand. Kim saw it on television in Boston and thought, what the hell am I doing here? Within weeks, she sold her car, packed her belongings, bought a printing press, and went home to help build the new South Africa. Back in Johannesburg, she and her dear friend and artist Klan Kla Saba found an empty space on Djepe street and started a cooperative print studio. They called it Artist Proof Studio. White artists said it would never survive. Black artists had no money to join, so they built it anyway. People shared tools, shared space, and shared skills. The studio became a place where artists from communities that had been separated for generations worked side by side, learning, arguing, teaching, making work together. Kim later said that the studio had become a kind of microcosm of the new South Africa. Messy, fragile, but full of possibility. Then, just as the country was beginning to stabilize, disaster struck. One night in 2003, the studio caught fire. Paper, ink, chemicals, everything burned. And Klenkla, who had been staying in the building, died in the fire. Kim said later, devastation is an understatement. Artist Proof was a home, a security, a livelihood. And the loss brought up every other trauma in people's lives. They had a choice, stop or start again. A few weeks after the funeral, the artists gathered in a basement space across the street from the burned out building. They began digging through the ashes, pulling out fragments of prints, pieces of paper, charred images. Dust filled the air. People coughed. Someone started singing. They laid the burned pieces on the floor and began Making new work out of what had survived. Kim wrote later, the act of collaging is reconstructive. It's sticking bits, pieces of fragments to make a whole. It is finding beauty in damage and loss. It is a metaphor for reconciliation. And that could be the end of this story. But Kim has always been very clear that it isn't. Because the story of artist Proustudio is not about her. It's about the thousands of vital, imaginative souls living in that country, people with enormous creative capacity, people with stories to tell, people who needed a place where those stories could be made visible. Artist Proof was founded in 1991, right as South Africa was moving toward democracy, with the idea that access to arts education, a shared space and collaboration could help build a society that apartheid had tried to prevent from the beginning. The studio focused on artists who might otherwise never have had the chance to study people facing social or economic barriers, and built a training program based on the belief that. That printmaking, because it can be shared and multiplied, is a democratic art form. Over the years, hundreds of artists passed through that space. Then thousands. Workshops, community projects, exhibitions, collaborations, mentorship. Not one story, many stories. And the work kept going. In 2026, more than three decades after that first press was set up, Artist proof marked its 35th with an exhibition celebrating the generations of artists who had come through its doors, artists whose work grew out of the same commitment to access, excellence, and the belief that creative practice belongs to everyone, not just the privileged few. The exhibition wasn't about nostalgia. It was about continuity, about the idea that the work of building a democratic culture never truly ends. And that may be the real lesson in this story. Democracy didn't come to South Africa because artists made prints. Artists made prints because democracy was being fought for. And when the fighting was over, the work wasn't finished. Because changing laws is one thing. Changing how people see themselves and how they see each other and what they believe is possible, well, that takes longer. Sometimes it takes generations. Sometimes it takes a studio. Sometimes it takes a handful of burned pieces of paper being turned into something new. And sometimes it takes thousands of people working quietly, stubbornly, imaginatively telling their stories until the country they live in begins to recognize itself in them. I like to close with voices of students and teachers reflecting on their Artist Proof experience on the occasion of the organization's 35th anniversary. First you'll hear a short news report on APS and the global art market. Then Artist Proof Studio representative Nathe Semelone, followed by some Artist Proof students.

As the global online art market surges forward. Poised to reach a staggering US$17.5 billion by 2026, artist Proof Studio is at the forefront of putting South African art on the world map and with its innovative online platform, APS is bridging the gap between local talent and global audiences, championing the country's creative economy and also showcasing the vibrant artistic landscape of the South Africa. In fact, to the world we are.

Able to focus on arts training, print collaborations, as well as the sales and distribution of prints. With our focus in education, we train talented students from South Africa as well as other parts of Africa. Our students are prominently showcased, making sure that all of the graduates that graduate from Otters Proof Studio are better positioned to become successful.

My Favorite Mediums right Now hi everyone, my name is. I'm from the south of Johannesburg from a town called Enadel Techniques. My favorite mediums right now are screen printing and dry print, preferably screen printing. It's one of those type of techniques where it's like all inclusive where you can use color, you can use black and white. The different styles of textures you can put into it are very expensive. It's just a very good medium.

My name is Tony. More self introspective, participating in it, learning enough from it. So that you can try to be a better version of oneself.

Originally I am from Free State Township. I'm a cool maker, painter, facilitator. I'll be having an exhibition on 21 March so it's connected to human rights and then my main inspiration for the show it's reflection, self imposed and please don't miss it. My name is, I'm a creative director. My work is premised on digitizing indigenous knowledge systems. You know the idea that like a picture's worth a thousand words and then technology enabled us to create more than a thousand words, to create 10,000 words, then a hundred thousand words and then a million.

Art is Change is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community. If you're interested in learning more about Artist Proof, please go to the link in our show notes which also includes links to the many people, places, events and publications mentioned in this episode. Last but certainly not least thanks to the Art Is Change team, our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart and hand of the maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe, our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of OOP235. So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word.