Life and death
on canvas

A Montreal nurse paints the
faces of a forgotten war

EXPLAINING HER SUBJECTS’ STORIES: Laura Archer

by MATT JONES

When Laura Archer returned to Canada in April 2007 after nine months of working as a nurse in bush clinics in the war-torn Central African Republic with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), she wasn’t sure what she’d do next. Unenthused about nursing in Quebec’s overstrained health care system, she tried flipping eggs at the café across the street and shovelling snow at the Bell Centre. Finally, she decided to take two months to figure out her future and paint, using the 10,000 pictures she’d taken on her three-megapixel camera as material.

A year later—minus a six-week excursion to the Congo to set up an emergency measles vaccination clinic—her St-Henri loft was filled with canvases of the faces of people, mostly children, she had met on her travels. Those paintings will be on display starting this Friday, Aug. 15, in an exhibit called Facing Africa. Behind each one is a story—of abuse, displacement, loss and sometimes a glint of childhood glee. The works will be displayed with a blurb that lets you into their stories, and Archer herself will be on site to fill in the details.

Kids on coke

“Sami” shows the melancholy face of a boy Archer believes to be a child soldier. She snapped the pic as he darted out of a bush while her group was stopped at a checkpoint near the Chadian border.

Archer says that interacting with child soldiers was one of the most difficult parts of the job. “It’s hard to deal with a 10-year-old on coke. But when you do find the kid inside, it’s fantastic.”

A pixelated painting shows the distorted image of a baby being held by its grandmother. “We had set up a bush clinic under a tree near a village. One day, an elderly woman arrived holding a baby that was barely breathing. The mother had been living in the bush outside the village because she was pregnant, surviving on berries. She delivered the baby herself and it seemed to have been a complicated birth. Since she was too ill to come herself, the grandmother had brought the baby. It wasn’t a secure area, so we couldn’t just go out to look for the mother.” Neither would survive. The mother was found two days later. “I wanted to tell the story but at the same time show respect for the baby,” Archer explains.

FINDING THE KID INSIDE: “Sami” (above) and “Aisha” (below)

Another major issue was widespread sexual abuse. Facing Africa features a series of girls’ faces in black and blue, all of whom were known or suspected to have been victims of this abuse that is rarely talked about in local circles. When the girls showed up, Archer decided to start up a Sex- and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) program. It was one of her most challenging experiences.

“It’s a different culture, with different beliefs and different laws. We started gathering information about the local perception of rape: Does it happen? Is it wrong? You can’t just put up posters saying, ‘Rape is bad.’”

In the end, the group organized a Women’s Day event, offering an antenatal clinic, food rations for struggling mothers and an area where victims of sexual abuse could speak confidentially and receive medical, although not psychological, treatment.

“I’m sure that just having someone listen, believe it happened and care has psychological benefit,” says Archer.

From health to paint

Archer says she had no idea she would end up painting when she took the pictures. She had no formal background in art. Her mother was a painter, but she says that in her native Charlottetown, it was seen as more of a “cute little housewife hobby. In Charlottetown, art is not something you pursue.” In 2006, she decided to apply to art school, and at the same time to MSF. She got accepted by both on the same day and immediately signed up for the MSF gig. “Painting seemed kind of frivolous in comparison.”

But her paintings have allowed her to share some of the stories she experienced in Africa. “When I came home, my friends would just ask questions like: ‘Did you see people die?’ ‘I hear it’s hot over there,’ ‘What did you eat?’ But after seeing the paintings, they would ask, ‘What’s this person’s story?’ and that’s when I could really explain what it was like.”

Facing Africa opens Friday,
Aug. 15, at 6 p.m. at Studio 371
(3035 St-Antoine W.)