Making Sense: A Rwandan Story is a collaborative project and exhibition, inspired by a visit the artist Helen Wilson Roe made to Rwanda in 2002. At its heart are twelve large-scale paintings which together tell a powerful and moving story of personal dignity, courage and survival.
Helen Wilson Roe had been painting images of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of over a million people in 100 days, well before she was able to travel there herself. Meeting survivors and visiting the genocide sites in person gave the later work in the series a different register — paintings that hold the beauty of Rwanda and the resilience of its people alongside the weight of what they had lived through, rather than working from imagination alone.
The exhibition at Barge House was accompanied by a documentary film about the project, produced by award-winning cameraman Mike Fox and BBC director Kate Broome, who had previously made television programmes together in Rwanda.
