Pieta: Ground Zero (1986 - 20240

Dimensions: 168 X 168 X 62cm

Medium: painted wood and mild steel.
(Exhibited in the 1997 exhibition but since worked on and base added).

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), 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 the suggestion of a chess game being played out on its top surface. But I immediately knew that this idea stemmed from a double exposure photograph that my father had taken before I was born, appearing in one of his photo albums. The photo depicted a group of white people sitting, drinking in party mode, with a dead black man lying in their midst in a mortuary, and has haunted me ever since I can remember. 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. Over time I found a pair of oars that I positioned on the top of the sarcophagus and in the early part of the 1990s, made the chair aspect out of welded mild steel.

Towards the end of 2019 I took this piece out of storage and felt compelled to rework and paint 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!

I was rather surprised to see on Facebook that I had posted photos of the finished piece on South Africa’s WOMENS 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!