Forward: A Manifesto

Dalli Weyers

Forward: A Manifesto
Plastic bags
124,5 cm x 88,5 cm

This artwork is a metatextual manifesto that reflects on the historical role of the manifesto and the need for this specific manifesto created by the artist at this moment in the everunfolding story of humanity. Forward: A manifesto draws from the archive to inform our response to the uncertainties of today.

The use of the artist’s preferred medium, plastic bags, is made poignant by both the permanence and fragility of plastic bags. Plastic bags, through a process of photodegradation, disintegrate but don’t break down completely. Instead, they turn into microplastics that remain in the environment for centuries. The use of this medium thus reflects both the detritus and progress made throughout history – both present and unseen – that the manifesto hopes to draw from and address.

 

Dalli Weyers is an activist, social democrat, and queer atheist with a bent for art, visual communication, and politics. Weyers is currently employed as a Human Rights Officer with the South African Human Rights Commission. Weyers has been involved in multiple social justice initiatives such as, but not limited to, designing fliers and posters for the Treatment Action Campaign (2005-2009), offering workshops to the school going members for Equal Education’s Equalisers on apartheid and global social justice struggle iconography and poster design (2009-2011), designing the Ndifuna Ukwazi logo (2011), and most recently giving input into the visual language used by the Khayelitsha-based Social Justice Coalition in print, media, and protest.