By CYNTHIA VAZQUEZ Special to the Daily Press
NORTH OF WILSHIRE While the GAP, Bono and Oprah may have made it cool to care about AIDS in Africa, the extent of most Americans’ participation in the fight goes about as far as wearing a RED brand T-shirt. However, the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica is bringing the battle against the disease in Africa much closer to home.
Currently on display inside the 11th Street church is the Keiskamma Altarpiece, an ornate 13-by 22-foot structure that provides visitors with a graphic retelling of one village’s valiant fight against the disease.
The story of the altarpiece compelled Senior Pastor Patricia Farris, of First United Methodist, to work alongside other local churches in landing the exhibition.
“Women started working on it before there was treatment available to them in their community; they were in the midst of the devastation of AIDS,” Farris said of the villagers. “It expresses their tremendous sorrow and the power of their hope.”
The people of Hamburg, a fishing village that sits near a bay on the eastern coast of South Africa, like most, viewed AIDS as a big-city disease. That is, until the mid-1980s, when their younger generation -- returning from the cities where they had gone to seek employment — began dying, leaving orphaned children to be raised by their grandmothers.
More than 130 women and several men built the Keiskamma Altarpiece, named for the river that runs through Hamburg and sustains their economy, within a six-month period. The piece spans the story of AIDS in Hamburg – from the past, with dark and muted colors depicting funeral scenes and sick children, to the future, where a sense of promise can be found in the life-sized portraits of grandmothers posing alongside the orphaned grandchildren they are raising.
Among the most poignant elements in the piece are the names sewn into the fabric — the names of those who died during the six months it took to create.
“There are names all over,” said Margy Blavin, who drove from Los Angeles last week to view the piece, which sits front and center at the Santa Monica church. “That’s the most upsetting part.”
The Keiskamma Altarpiece has been the subject of a North American tour since August 2006, but the closest it would have been to Santa Monica was UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Pastor Farris worked to change that. After seeing it for herself, she wanted to share its message with her congregation and local residents.
“So often people can become cynical in their lives … too self-centered,” Farris said. “We want to say, ‘There’s something you can do and you ought to be doing. What’s happening to them matters to us all.’”
It was then Farris coordinated with local churches and a synagogue — First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, St. Augustine-by-the- Sea, St. Monica Catholic Church and the Santa Monica Synagogue — to sponsor the local showing. Each clergy member involved felt the altarpiece’s message crossed not only geographical borders, but faith-based ones as well.
When Farris called on Rabbi Jeff Marx of Santa Monica Synagogue in efforts to gain financial sponsorship, the rabbi was eager to lend a hand.
“I told her we would be delighted to help out. This is an international issue – it goes across countless boundaries,” Marx said, adding that while worshippers at Santa Monica Synagogue won’t be going to services centered on the piece, they “certainly are going to visit it.”
Still, the inter-denominational coopera-tion goes beyond the financial aspect. Several of the religious institutions have worked together before.
“We know each other – we work together a lot,” Farris said. “It was easy to pick up the phone and ask,‘Would you like to be a part of this?’ Everyone said ‘yes’ right away. We wanted to make a statement to the community, as a larger faith community, that this is something we all care about and are in together.”
Farris wants to include everyone in the sense of unified responsibility, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof.
“Sometimes when we see documentaries on TV or read the paper, the loss is so overwhelming that we become numb. We don’t know what to do,” she said.“This [altarpiece] communicates that, but goes to the next level and communicates that power of hope.
“It inspires and challenges us all.” All this week, events at First United Methodist will be geared towards raising money for the Keiskamma Trust, which funds arts, education and the Keiskamma AIDS/HIV Outreach Project.
The Keiskamma Altarpiece can be viewed daily through March 22 at the First United Methodist Church, 1008 11th Street. For a schedule of events, visit the church’s Web site at www.santamonicaumc.org or call (310) 393-8258.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.