Forgotten Body: the Haunting, is a body of work that consists of ‘non-fixed’ sculptures and portrait photography. The work explores the concept of hauntology that results from acts of erasure within the South African Indigenous (First Peoples) archive.
Having close Indigenous ethnic relations from both my paternal and maternal families, I became intrigued by the historical and contemporary development of the South African Indigenous archive.
When it comes to form-making and fabric selection, the sculptural process is influenced by this chosen group of people (South African Indigenous) who are simultaneously known and unknown. To explore the concept of the familiar, I use sculptural forms I’ve constructed out of fabrics with cultural references that allude to the many traditions that surround today’s South African Indigenous people. The construction of these forms is also prompted by the idea of there being sparse documentation on the history of South Africa’s Indigenous populations (First Peoples). Therefore, I then start to make abstract shapes that have little to no basis in reality; these apparitions have no definite form and thus embody the mysterious.
The capturing of these figures serves to illustrate the ideas of erasure, to bring forth what has been excluded.
Forgotten Body: the Haunting
2022
Photography