KwaZulu Natal, South Africa 1896-1999
Date: | 2001 |
Dimensions: | W9m x H2m x D4m |
Media: | Cotton paper, latex rubber, video components |
My recent works have been dealing with the need to reassess the archival process in South Africa. Location (home) is an ongoing theme that is being investigated in relationship to re-establishing and re-examining identity. The land is a highly contested metaphor in post-colonial Africa. I have conflated the land and the body by developing a medium that simulates human skin and the surface of the land. Boundaries, borders, territories and ownership of the land is relative to the conflicts that have afflicted the process of history. I selected the geographical area that I am most familiar with as a metaphor which I believe is universally applicable. I have tattooed the skin/land with archival data drawn from historical archival information relevant to land dispossession and the conflicts that reflect the various colonial and apartheid wars that have shaped it. Opposite the maps are three video clips that reveal masculine predatory behaviour. The viewer enters the contested terrain between the maps and the video monitors.