The strange alchemy of the judge and the blue dress

Abstract

After being tortured, Phila Ndwande’s body was found naked in a shallow grave, with a scrap of a blue plastic fashioned as a panty to cover her genitals. The artist, Judith Mason, was so moved by her story that she made a dress of blue plastic bags on which she inscribed the following text:

Sister, a plastic bag may not be the whole armour of God, but you were wrestling with flesh and blood, and against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in sordid places. Your weapons were your silence and a piece of rubbish. Finding that bag and wearing it until you were disinterred is such a frugal, common-sensical, house-wifey thing to do, an ordinary act ... Memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn-bushes. This dress is made from some of them.