For this project we needed to produce and artefact of any kind that was indicative of South Africa’s visual culture, our struggles and beliefs and different cultures and ideas, and we had to make an indication to our personal experience of South Africa. We had to redefine our European and post-colonialist perspective of visual culture in South Africa and reclaim it for ourselves, break the rules of European academic art or design if you will. 

This piece is called the spectator. It incorporates the style of Ndebele beadwork in the form of a decorated flag of South Africa, but put into a classical European-style frame. The frame incorporates a Fleur de Lis at the top and bottom, a symbol used by French royalty to signify their direct connection to God, and also represents nobility. 

The woman standing to the left is a self-portrait, and it functions as a visual representation of my own experience as a South African, as I’ve always felt like I’ve been on the outskirts of something big and wonderful, but never a part of it, and thus I become a spectator rather than one who lives in it directly. 

While I am proud to be South African, I would be lying if I said I ever felt the sense of Ubuntu and togetherness that everyone speaks of. Thus, the European frame, it signifies my European descent and the point of view that I have over the rainbow nation, admiring it from a distance but never fully experiencing it. I felt the need to be brutally honest in this piece because I would otherwise be lying about my experience as a South African, albeit negative.