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Deity (2002)

Oil on canvas (painting) 165 x 105 cm & Charcoal on paper (drawing)
Created at the Sacatar Foundation, Brazil
Exhibited at Brett Kebble Art Awards
Oliewenhuis Museum Art Collection

The orixás, the godly saints of the Candomblé have each a designated colour. I have painted the painting in Brazil while I worked at the Sacatar Foundation. Deity is a mixture of black and whiteness, a cross-cultural goddess dancing a traditional dance. Her tongue sticks out in an uncontrollable reflex, linking with Walter Benjamin’s angel that runs backwards into the future looking into the past witnessing the chaotic, dusty debris caused by earthly tragedies created by a snow-balling cataclysm in the beginning of time.

Thresholds: Deities, South Africa in transition, hysteria