PIETA: GROUND ZERO 1986-2022.

Title: PIETA: GROUND ZERO 1986-2022.
(9 August 2022, SA National Women's Day)

Medium; Painted wood and mild steel.
Dimensions: 168 X 168 X 62 cm

(Exhibited in the 1997 exhibition but since worked on and base added).
Price: R50,000

On entering the exhibition the viewer will be confronted with this piece that appears to be devoid of the sentiments one normally associates with depictions of the ‘Pieta’ theme in art history. Although it was first exhibited on my 1997 exhibition (with a different title referencing Michelangelo's 'Pieta'.), its genesis goes back to a sketch I made during tumultuous political times in South Africa, around 1985.

The sketch was of a coffin/sarcophagus with some sort of chess game being played out on its top surface. But I immediately knew that this idea went even further back in my subconscious and stemmed from a double exposure photograph that my father (a fledgling policeman at the time), had taken before I was born, and that appeared in one of his photo albums. The one aspect of this double exposure was a group of white men sitting around drinking, in party mode, and superimposed onto this was an image of a dead black man lying in a morgue, creating the rather macabre impression that the white men were having a party around the dead black man's body. This photo has haunted me ever since I can remember and even in those tender formative years of my childhood I could sense that all was not well in the South Africa I was destined to grow up in.

In 1986 I felt compelled to start carving the coffin aspect of this nascent idea. I immediately intuited that I should carve a rudder on either end of the sarcophagus, locked in opposite directions. This dramatic stalemate seemed to obviate the need for me to actualise the chess pieces on the top surface of the sarcophagus as was my original intention. At some stage it dawned on me that the sarcophagus across the lap of a heavy metal chair could parody Michelangelo's 'Pieta' and speak of the dreadful times we live in. Such an anthropomorphic mother-chair, made from mild steel is cold and dispassionate, the antithesis of a caring Mother-Mary figure. When I placed a set of oars across the top of the sarcophagus it heightened the pathos of the whole ensemble.

After exhibiting the piece on my 1997 'Contemplation' exhibition the piece was placed in storage. Towards the end of 2019 I took this piece out of storage and felt compelled to rework and repaint it. It was around the time when the threat of the Covid 19 Flu epidemic loomed over the world. I also decided to place it on a substantial base on which I painted a target-like insignia, to signify ‘ground zero’: the area directly below a nuclear explosion where everything gets vapourised. An area of total annihilation!

Recently, I was rather surprised to see on Facebook that I had posted photos of the finished piece on South Africa’s National
Women's, Day, 9 Aug 2022, which, incidentally, also happens to be the anniversary of the detonation of the atomic bomb over Nagasaki, 77 years ago. The spiritual symbolism of 77 is unlimited forgiveness!