Wealth and Status
_The major themes of this body of work revolve around cross-cultural South African symbols of wealth, status and belonging.
Birthright a solo exhibition held at Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town and then again at the Gallery Hall, Hollard Insurance, Johannesburg 2007, broadly explored the symbolic importance of farm animals and their slaughter within our contemporary society. The highly detailed carcasses of the pig and lamb conjure up memories of the family farm, community festivals or ancestoral worship and like the sheep head portraits in The Flock, which are reminicent of old family photographs, ask us to question our personal historical and cultural value systems.
The work Baby Skins:PhD and CEO looks more specifically at the contemporary woman's environment, one strongly influenced by modern capitalist ideas of wealth and success, and one which often comes into conflict with traditional values. The work is based on the pregnancy aprons (isibodya) traditionally worn by pregnant Zulu women in South Africa. They are used to ward off evil spirits and to request the protection of the ancestors for the unborn child. Both the finely beaded Nguni skin and the brand marks reflect aspirations of status.
Certain works from this exhibition were exhibited at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia as part of their South African Art exhibition in 2007 and then bought to form part of the Meulenstein Collection.
Birthright a solo exhibition held at Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town and then again at the Gallery Hall, Hollard Insurance, Johannesburg 2007, broadly explored the symbolic importance of farm animals and their slaughter within our contemporary society. The highly detailed carcasses of the pig and lamb conjure up memories of the family farm, community festivals or ancestoral worship and like the sheep head portraits in The Flock, which are reminicent of old family photographs, ask us to question our personal historical and cultural value systems.
The work Baby Skins:PhD and CEO looks more specifically at the contemporary woman's environment, one strongly influenced by modern capitalist ideas of wealth and success, and one which often comes into conflict with traditional values. The work is based on the pregnancy aprons (isibodya) traditionally worn by pregnant Zulu women in South Africa. They are used to ward off evil spirits and to request the protection of the ancestors for the unborn child. Both the finely beaded Nguni skin and the brand marks reflect aspirations of status.
Certain works from this exhibition were exhibited at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia as part of their South African Art exhibition in 2007 and then bought to form part of the Meulenstein Collection.
