Pure Taste Indicator - Artist Page

Complexity of living between. As a child, I had worn-down slippers for shoes. Not daring to show the holes, I remade these slippers into a boat, a car or an island. I invented a new context for each particular slipper, giving it a new identity. Day to day African reality forced me to improvise and to recombine all kinds of materials in order to make new objects. In society we have the tendency to clear up or put a way things that are broken down. As an artist, I use broken down things and discarded materials and re-use them in new contexts, thus creating something that is original. Does its original meaning hold up when it is close to other attributes? Can attributes, when brought together, signify something new. These are some of the questions which have their roots in my African childhood where I constantly had to re-use discarded materials in order to make playthings and toys. Through my art I want to address issues relevant to contemporary society, and in this manner, encouraging people to start thinking out of the box and move away from their mental complacency. The themes I address in my work include: the questionable drive in our society towards physical perfection and eternal youth, the power invested/infested nature of Language, the way society deals with death, the transient nature of things. The transformative and regenerative power of destruction is my incentive to shake and stir up people’s minds. I do so by alienating them from their set ways and patterns and confronting them with the consequences of their actions.