SCULPTURES
MARRIGWE KA LIRRIMI LA MINA is a series of handmade mixed media masks describing the violence of miseducation and focuses on lost, forgotten or sidelined languages. The work is a mournful and highly personal meditation on the loss of language as a result of coloniasation/Apartheid and more recently, neo-Imperialist globalisation through mass media and corporate interests. The materials are alternately earthy/natural/organic, as well as industrial and ornate, recalling the tension between the ancient and the modern, the African in their “natural unaffected state” and the modern post-colonial African.
Language is a uniquely human set of systems, from which many ideas, religions, and cultures have attained their foundation/character. As much as language systems shape communication “style” or form, they are also crucial in the content thereof, and thus are bestowed with tremendous power in mediating and relating the human experience. In this way, language is a core component of what forms our identities as individuals and as communities. Conversely, a lack of aptitude in a particular language system can affect economic, political and social mobility, as well as self esteem and “social esteem”.
Language has been a much contested battle ground in the ancient, global story of colonialism. Part of a function of “settler colonialism” is the extermination of indigenous people/culture. this includes a myriad of either overt or subtle societal structures which act to either weaken or outright destroy indigenous culture.
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In South Africa we have seen this play out in many social dynamics as well as historical events such as the 1976 Soweto student riots contesting the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in schools, or more recently (2015 - 2018) in universities all over the country calling for decolonisation of the education system (in which language is a key structural component).
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