Desmond Tutu, Australian Gothic & the Sublime Divine

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets,
to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea
and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew…
Human beings are actually created for the transcendent,
for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful…
and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world
a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Once upon a time in New York, I told Jeff Jaffe at Pop International Gallery one of the most sublime moments of my life was getting a hug from Desmond Tutu.

It was one of the more interesting days of my life.

It was pouring rain, I’d just delivered a couple of pop : art : rock mannequins to Jimmy King at Bowie’s office in New York, when he messaged to say he’d like to see them. So I’d dashed over to Bowie’s office, again, asked Jimmy if I could borrow them for a couple of hours. I arrived at the Gallery half soaking, and, noticing the South African accent, mentioned the hug.

Later I was reminded of a beautiful, bittersweet story from October 1993, when Tutu spoke in Brisbane’s King George Square alongside my first university tutor and friend, Dave Andrews, influential social justice activist and author of Christianarchy.

Archbishop Tutu was the guest of Lord Mayor Jim Soorley, and thousands gathered to hear him speak in the centre of Brisbane. It was a pivotal moment in Australia’s history, as the political and cultural struggles for recognition, restoration, land rights and reconciliation blazed as hot as the red dirt at the heart of the continent.

Then, just as the Wakka Wakka Dance Troupe began a formal welcome, another Aboriginal man pushed onto the stage, enraged, shouting his objections, challenging the cultural right of the official dancers to perform a particular dance that belonged to his mob he claimed.

It was deeply awkward. The crowd shifted uneasily. The dancers fell silent. The man and his group were noisily escorted away by security, and the official program resumed.

The Wakka Wakka dancers began again, visibly shaken, but went on to give a powerful performance under the sun that spring afternoon.

Tutu then delivered his inspirational message about grace, justice and unity at an acute cultural flashpoint in both Australian and South African race relations. His talk culminated in the large crowd lifting their hands at his invitation, waving back and forth together, embodying his vision of us all as the “Rainbow People of God.” It was characteristically Tutu: charming, prophetic, disarming, and full of light.

The event ended. The large crowds drifted away till only about a dozen of us remained in the square when the Archbishop quietly slipped back out from City Hall, walked over and asked if he could meet the elder who had felt so aggrieved.

Someone found him and brought him over. Tutu spoke privately with him for a while.

And then, there, in the midst of our tiny group he invited the man to perform his sacred cultural dance personally, intimately, before us.

I remember the sacred magic of that moment so vividly. A small group of stragglers sat cross-legged in a circle with Desmond Tutu in the now-deserted square, while the man, still in his everyday clothes, danced his traditional dance with all the passion he had in him.

Anger transformed in the face of witness and grace.

And yet, barely a month later, Daniel Yock – one of the young men in that first dance troupe, not much younger than me at the time – would be dead in police custody across the river in West End.

Put on your Red Shoes and Dance the Blues Bowie sang in 1983. The lyrics alludes to Hans Christian Andersens cursed red shoes that danced the wearer away from grace. The film clip was shot in outback Australia, featuring the aboriginal dancers facing a clash of cultures. A decade later, an African Archbishop who knew all too well the pain of oppression gave grace and witness to the pain of all the dancers that day, on the record, and off.

Australian Gothic and the Sublime Divine.

I left Jeff’s Gallery and ran back up to LaFayette st, and returned the Art Mannequins to Jimmy King for the third time that day. There’s a picture of Jimmy took of us standing in the corridor the third time, as the door to the Isolar empire I was holding open slammed shut behind us, locking him out without his keys or phone. I was mortified but he was gracious and we giggled all the way down the lift…

I flew back to Australia the next day.

As I’d left Jeff’s gallery he leaned in and whispered, “one of the most sublime moments of my life was getting a hug from Desmond Tutu, now go and create”

I made him a little Tutu mannequin.
The Archbishop reminds us to keep dancing in the gaze of grace.


Tanja Stark

Australian Gothic and the Sublime Divine


While making a quirky Desmond Tutu Pop Art Mannequin for Jeff Jafffe, owner of Pop New York