ARC OF THE TESTIMONY
by Garth Erasmus
2 a womb of song
3 show your wound
4 string is broken
5 secret mothers
6 rivers in the ocean
7 looking for Dia!kwain
8 in a oneness
9 she and a he-rain
During the Apartheid times my work was almost exclusively focused on political content but gradually my focus has shifted to exploring themes of a more personal nature. Ever since 1985 I have been busy investigating my family and ancestral roots in the Eastern Cape.
ARC OF THE TESTIMONY is a series of 9 silkscreen prints that deal with personal iconography and contains the image of the Khoisan musical bow as its central symbol. For 20 years now I have been playing the bow as an integral part of my music-making activities and for the last 5 years I have been part of the performance group the Khoi Khonnexion. It is an instrument that I have researched extensively and built myself and it has become an important metaphor in my work for my personal reclamation of ancestral heritage and roots. Growing up in Apartheid South Africa, this aspect of community life has been severely damaged or simply neglected in the face of the more pressing priority of anti-Apartheid struggle.
These images developed over a number of years and come out of my experiences of playing the bow and also the experience of teaching and explaining the playing techniques in mostly workshop situations. The arc of the title refers to the actual physical arc-like shape of the bow itself and testimony refers to the poetic texts that have been worked into the images. The texts which come from a separate body of work references aspects of South African historical facts / events as well as personal poetic inspiration.
Cultural Exchange Program
Caversham Press in KwaZuluNatal in conjunction with the Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium had a exchange program between South African and Belgium visual artists and writers in 2003/4. Both these institutions are printmaking centres. Because of the history of colonialism, there is a connection between the Flemish and SA cultures [especially regarding aspects of LANGUAGE...ie Afrikaans]. I was one of the SA artists selected and produced this series of silkscreens during this program. The program was entitled E-POS and dealt with issues of language / identity / ethnicity / nationality... by both the Belgium and South African artists/writers. The results of this collaboration work were published in Belgium during this year [2005]. It has not yet been published in SA.
