Voting Station

Voting Station

Chicago Anti-Apartheid

Voting Station is a step by step instructional poster on how to vote created by South African comic Jonathan Zapiro. This poster was created in response to the South African government holding its first democratic election in years and allowing the people of the nation to vote. The steps on how to vote were done in three different languages, English, Zulu, and Xhosa as all three were the most commonly spoken languages of South Africa. The poster features a colorful illustration done in watercolor and outlined in colored pencil. After the illustration was completed the work was transfer to a larger poster where the text was laid out and began to be printed on mass. The importance of the poster was the help those who don’t understand how to vote during a time where this was considered the first election of a country, giving a voice to a group affected most by the apartheid and treated like second-class citizens in their own country. In similar fashion to Zapio’s work, an anonymous protester made a pamphlet for Egyptian Revolution of 2011 which included what kind of clothes to wear, how to act during the protest, and what equipment to use when confronted by riot police. Nina Power writes in her article about how art and protest have unstable relationship with each other and how it affects both subjects. Power says, “Who could say what work artists have made outside of a context of political turmoil, war and social unrest? And yet the same time we often feel uneasy at demanding that art always be political, that it always respond to whatever historical events are emerging around it”. Both pieces are considered art for their use of imagery and information to those during a historical event be it a vote in an election or what to do and how to act to use during a protest.

Columbia College Chicago Students

Chicago Anti-Apartheid Movement Collection, College Archives & Special Collections, Columbia
College Chicago

College Archives & Special Collections, Columbia College Chicago

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