What Art Thou?

 

Here I was explaining ‘my weird’ art to a friend. It was in 2004 I think, when this picture was taken. My friend had stumbled on me working with tyres and nails and wires and pins and spikes and bolts and screws and their ilk. His first reaction was to make a quick test of my sanity or sobriety. He requested I tell him his name. I did. Could I identify the picture embedded in the pendant of his necklace? I could. Satisfied that I was of sound mind, he knitted his brow as he scanned the objects and tools I was busy with. “I’m working on an installation,” I said, answering his unspoken question.

“Installation?” My answer tightened his frown.

Thing is, for the previous few years, my art had taken a radically new direction, exploring media and techniques I had not worked with before. In my earlier years, especially during the pre-vocational era, I was heavily into drawing and painting – the common, mundane visual art expressions. In fact, in high school at Lotsane, I was an excellent art student, especially with graphite. A classmate of mine and I were the only art students in school who could draw flawless portraits. His name is Osenotse. We charged students P20 and teachers P50. They came! Business was good. In those days, this was great money for a secondary school student. But the supposedly doomed year 2000 was fast approaching. It was like an impeding catastrophe with all the Y2K scare. Time was going to stop, we learnt. Computers would malfunction. A global apocalypse was expected. With the impending doomsday in mind, we drew commissioned portraits and made as much money as we could. And spent it while we still could. Maybe the world was ending in 2000. It was like we were trying to live that phrase, ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’