Artwork

Immortal coils

2021 Competition entry

Detail
Tags

Zanoxolo Sylvester Mqeku

Details:
Signed
Multimedia on sandcast terracotta clay
30 x 60 cm
R12 000 (set)
Description:
My work is an emblem of innovative artistic studio practice one example of creative response to the needs of our current natural environment where human activities need to be rethought in search of ways by which we may take from nature mostly what we can put back. The unique process I use (sand casting) becomes an everlasting dance with negative and positive forms. Clay is used to capture forms and negative imprints of anything made in fine damp sand, this demonstrates an awareness of innovative art methods that use 100% recyclable material (Sand). Much like playing at the beach sand as a natural material lends itself to ephemeral expression, connecting in real time the maker’s memory and body to the earth, its textures, riches, colours, sounds, smells and as a container for the remains of all mortal life forms. But the flexibility of clay when mixed with water allows it to become the suitable tool that can receive imprints and negative forms made in sand especially when it will be fired and become durable enough to interpret and hold form for up to 25 000 years.

“Mortal coils” is a work-in-progress visual emblem of how things like respiration, oxygen, and fresh air are suddenly a threat to life. So, it seems we are entering a fourth industrial survey of the collective threats to the collective narrative of breathing, right at the mercy of our anthropogenic influence, we find questions of the destructive power of nature and her declining capacities. Looking at the sand moulds that created the four pieces of “Mortal coils” the negative imprint of a mask wearing a mask is a gentle reminder of the limits of time, particularly the situation we entered as a global society and the repetitive image of unidentifiable figures with their Covid masks on. When clay has captured all four of these imprints, when the artist has put them to the fire, negative forms have now become positive images that can never decay or wither at least for the next 25 000 years.
Jean Baudrillard introduced the idea of how language and reason may give and take away from reality or the origin of the real, Nietzsche as well spoke of the effect of societal constructs on the experience of a real object, experience being the copy of a copy of a replica of an imitation, this became famously known as simulacrum, for the artist this is three parts visualizing the potential future of a dying "post-biotic" natural world, and two parts a transmission of the psychological stamp of a pandemic atmosphere.

Mixed media Clay

Detail
Tags

Zanoxolo Sylvester Mqeku

Details:
Signed
Multimedia on sandcast terracotta clay
30 x 60 cm
R12 000 (set)

Description:
My work is an emblem of innovative artistic studio practice one example of creative response to the needs of our current natural environment where human activities need to be rethought in search of ways by which we may take from nature mostly what we can put back. The unique process I use (sand casting) becomes an everlasting dance with negative and positive forms. Clay is used to capture forms and negative imprints of anything made in fine damp sand, this demonstrates an awareness of innovative art methods that use 100% recyclable material (Sand). Much like playing at the beach sand as a natural material lends itself to ephemeral expression, connecting in real time the maker’s memory and body to the earth, its textures, riches, colours, sounds, smells and as a container for the remains of all mortal life forms. But the flexibility of clay when mixed with water allows it to become the suitable tool that can receive imprints and negative forms made in sand especially when it will be fired and become durable enough to interpret and hold form for up to 25 000 years.

“Mortal coils” is a work-in-progress visual emblem of how things like respiration, oxygen, and fresh air are suddenly a threat to life. So, it seems we are entering a fourth industrial survey of the collective threats to the collective narrative of breathing, right at the mercy of our anthropogenic influence, we find questions of the destructive power of nature and her declining capacities. Looking at the sand moulds that created the four pieces of “Mortal coils” the negative imprint of a mask wearing a mask is a gentle reminder of the limits of time, particularly the situation we entered as a global society and the repetitive image of unidentifiable figures with their Covid masks on. When clay has captured all four of these imprints, when the artist has put them to the fire, negative forms have now become positive images that can never decay or wither at least for the next 25 000 years.
Jean Baudrillard introduced the idea of how language and reason may give and take away from reality or the origin of the real, Nietzsche as well spoke of the effect of societal constructs on the experience of a real object, experience being the copy of a copy of a replica of an imitation, this became famously known as simulacrum, for the artist this is three parts visualizing the potential future of a dying "post-biotic" natural world, and two parts a transmission of the psychological stamp of a pandemic atmosphere.

Mixed media Clay