{"id":166614,"date":"2020-09-24T06:48:03","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T04:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police\/"},"modified":"2020-09-24T06:48:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T04:48:03","slug":"artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist hopes portrait will haunt police"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/robynmatsumi-4796hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of a portrait on a pole\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"3916128768\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Clinton Osbourn created a life size portrait of activist and sex worker Robyn Matsumi. Matsumi died in police custody at the Mowbray police station. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Robyn Mutsumi died in police custody in April 2020.<\/li>\n<li>Artist Clinton Osbourn has placed a life-sized portrait of Mutsumi on a pole near Mowbray police station where she died.<\/li>\n<li>IPID is investigating if Mutsumi committed suicide.<\/li>\n<li>Sex worker advocacy groups want to know what has happened with the investigation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>On 9 April, sex worker and activist Robyn Mutsumi was arrested on a drug charge and held at the Mowbray police station. A few days later she died in police custody. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/news24\/southafrica\/news\/police-watchdog-investigating-baffling-death-of-sex-worker-while-in-custody-20200603\">is investigating<\/a> what is allegedly a suicide by hanging. Sex worker advocacy groups are demanding an update on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sweat.org.za\/2020\/05\/29\/press-statement-how-did-robyn-montsumi-die-in-the-custody-of-mowbray-police-station\/\">investigation<\/a>. SWEAT has also referred the case to the South African Human Rights Commission.<\/p>\n<p>To raise awareness, artist Clinton Osbourn on Tuesday made a life-sized portrait of Mastumi in wax crayon, laminated it and put it up on a pole near to the Mowbray police station.<\/p>\n<p>Osbourn says he was haunted by Matsumi\u2019s death. \u201cI wanted to make some kind of statement,\u201d he says. \u201cThere have been no consequences \u2026 Somebody is responsible, but nobody is being held responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matsumi is pointing at the police station and has a speech bubble with: \u201cMy name is Robyn Montsumi. I died in the Mowbray police station on 12 April. My family, my friends and my partner deserve to know the truth about what happened to me. I deserve justice\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey [police] need to know that there are people that are watching them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Even though Osbourn expects police will take the artwork down, he says he felt a sense of relief once it was put up.<\/p>\n<p>Constance Mathe, co-ordinator at the Asijiki Coalition (a group advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work) and a friend of Matsumi, says the portrait is a beautiful likeness.<\/p>\n<p>Matsumi, she says, was a kind and caring person and a \u201cpeacemaker\u201d, one of the founders of the LGBTIQ+ sex worker movement at the Sex Workers Education &amp; Advocacy Task force (SWEAT).<\/p>\n<p>Like many people in her community, Mathe does not believe it was a suicide. She says Matsumi was in the police cell \u201cmany times\u201d. Since her death, a number of memorials and protests have been held outside the police station. She hopes the picture stays up \u201cas a memory\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Osbourn, who is an employee at SWEAT and has a history of art activism including having worked at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/YoungInPrisonSA\/\">Young in Prison<\/a>, has made <a href=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/klintonoz\">collaborative comic books<\/a> and is a member of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/we.are.kif\/\">Kollektivo Illuminoso Fresco<\/a>, an art collective.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clinton Osbourn created a life size portrait of activist and sex worker Robyn Matsumi. Matsumi died in police custody at the Mowbray police station. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks Robyn Mutsumi died in police custody in April 2020. Artist Clinton Osbourn has placed a life-sized portrait of Mutsumi on a pole near Mowbray police station where she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-166614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/artist-hopes-portrait-will-haunt-police.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}