Description:

With the onset of the pandemic, emotions have been building and rising, nameless faces rose up to destroy, and nameless faces rose to question, nameless faces died, nameless faces seeking justice. Pareidolia, created during the unrest of the looting sparked by Jacob Zuma's trial, speaks to the smoke that engulfed parts of South Africa. The artwork plays on death and destruction, South Africa being erased. The struggle for power and the loss of the need to serve the people. Like the smoke that rose from places being burnt within South Africa, so too do all the issues we face rise like smoke. Although the work began as a response to the looting incidents, it does not end there, it speaks to how we got there as well, the culmination of emotions, of unheard voices, unheard cries, unheard hopes and desires of our nation. As the work began, I painted a complete South Africa with silhouettes of people, representing what SA stood for, the people, the faces of generations past and generations to come, "we the people". The people who came together to create the freedom charter, the constitution, envisioned the hopes for a rainbow nation, the hopes for freedom, equality and justice. However, all we have seen is corruption, a lack of sharing in the wealth of the country, unemployment rising, crime rate increasing, buildings burnt, businesses lost and cries for justice opposed, all rising as smoke from our land. The first representation did not feel right to me as it did not depict what SA had become, where it seemed to be heading, so I began erasing the work and in so doing, began to depict destruction and decay, alluding to what we've come to find as a norm within our nation. The struggles and fights of the past, from the apartheid era, the dreams and goals of a nation that once stood together. The people this country was built for and upon, now being erased in the search for power and authority. The work asks us what else must burn? What else has burnt? What smoke do we each see rising from the country? Images form within the work, speaking to the visual illusion of pareidolia. The work can be viewed in any direction, creating a different perspective and various illusions.

Artist: Micayla Mohamadie

CONTACT DETAILS:

Auctioneer: GOLDEN KEY INTERNATIONAL HONOUR SOCIETY

Contact No: 012 003 2990

Email: [email protected]