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Herald Focus, Tuesday, February 15, 2011. Nomahlubi Jordaan

Art exhibition pays tribute to a Mother / Makan remembers the beautiful woman who suffered from Alzheimer’s

While Alizheimer’s was ravaging the memory of Amita Makan’s once beautiful, strong and dynamic mother, she started doing a series of her paintings from old photographs to keep her memory “intact”. Makan’s mother, Vasanti, was diagnosed with the disease in 1997, a year after she recovered from breast cancer.

Makan, an artist, is displaying the series of her paintings she did of her mother at her exhibition titled, Evanescence (soon passing out of sight, memory and existence) , which runs until March 5 at the Ron Belling Gallery in Park Drive, Port Elizabeth.

The exhibition will be opened by the Indian High Commissioner, Virendra Gupta, the most senior representative of the government of India in South Africa.

Coming to terms with her mother’s illness and accepting that she was dying was something she found difficult to do.

“In 2006, my brother died tragically and soon after that, my mother started losing her ability to eat.

“She was beginning to fade away and no longer remembered us”.

Makan’s mother was at the time based in Port Elizabeth, while she lived in Pretoria.

The series of her paintings of her mother was, according to Makan, born out of grief and pain, trying to remember her.

“In 2002, she came to Pretoria to visit me.

“And with her she brought two photographs and she asked me to look after them and keep them safe”.

By giving her the photographs, Makan said it felt as if her mother was trying to tell her to remember her.

So in November 2006, Makan started to paint.

“I was tring to keep her memory intact”.

“I was trying to keep her whole and remember her as she was”.

Makan was 40 when she started painting her mother from old photographs including the two she had given her.

“She was a beautiful woman. All the paintings I did of her were from photographs taken of her. Some were pictures I took of her, while she was dying”.

Besides the fact that her mother was beautiful, Makan’s inspiration to paint her also came from her dynamic and interesting personality.

“I wanted to share her story and beauty”.

“My mother was a strong, courageous and vivacious woman”.

“From the time of her marriage, at the age of 17, she wore beautiful, brightly coloured saris, which were strongly tied to her identity and sense of self.

“She draped her six-metre saris with great finesse, and in a nonchalant manner. Within minutes, she resembled a Bollywood star.

As the disease worsened, her saris began to hang lopsidedly over her body”.

Alzheimer’s according to Makan, had made her mother forget doing simple things like dressing herself, being able to speak, write and walk.

“She loved cooking and could drive before, but with the Alzheimer’s she started losing her sense of self and identity.

“she could not articulate her needs and we as her children became her custodians”.

Five weeks before her mother died, Makan, who worked on the paintings for three years, said she took photographs of her.

“These included pictures of her mother’s eyes and feet and a nightdress she had given to her.

“I couldn’t believe the same eyes and feet were so beautiful”.

From the exhibition, people could expect a “small story” that spoke of human existence, Makan said.

“It is about a cycle of life and death, which we all experience in our lives”.

The exhibition, she added, told a story about the impact of the disease, not only on her mother’s life, but on her’s and her siblings”.

“It is painful for loved ones to experience the slow deterioration of someone’s life”.

Makan, who completed her master’s degree in international relations from Rhodes University, said art had always been a part of her.

“I loved drawing and painting as a child, but growing up under the apartheid regime, we did not have art at school. In her first year at Rhodes, Makan, did history of art and fine art. It was when she moved to Switzerland with her husband and worked at a ceramic studio that she rekindled her love for art. For Makan, who is currently working on Miriam Makeba series of paintings, which will be on exhibition in Pretoria in April, art is “a beautiful medium of expression”.