Salomi Prinsloo artworks featuring in DEKAT May/June 2017 edition. June 9, 2017 16:16

 DEKAT  ARTICLE ON ARTWORK OF SALOMI PRINSLOO.

"I want to escape to the farm of my longing". Acrylic on canvas

Works from my exhibition: "The Land Explored through Peeling and Revealing"  is currently featuring in an article written by Fransi Phillips in the May/June edition of the  DEKAT magazine.

These works exhibited in 2006 at the Tina Skukan gallery in Pretoria, SA, strongly emphasize my bond with the land, showing idyllic scenes of peace and abundance with titles like: "I want to escape to the farm of my longing", before confronting the viewer with a shocking 6 panel work: "19 728 Epitaphs for last year's murderer".  This work depicts a landscape with 19 728 tiny incisions hand  carved into the board of the artwork. Every stripe represents someone who was murdered between 2003/2004 in South Africa. Every stripe gives recognition to a precious life lost, and collectively count the lives of those who were murdered between 2003/2004.

My intention was to celebrate the beauty of my beloved country with works like: "Sonklokkies", "Onder kokerboom se blaar", "Grondskrif" en "Pampoenblomme".

"Sonklokkies" Acrylic on canvas

"Onder kokerboom se blaar"

These works of abundance and peace celebrated by idyllic scenes, celebrate my passion for the the country where I was born and where I love to live. However, I had to raise my concern for lives unnecessarily  lost in this country, by also creating artworks to bring attention to the vastness of the murder statistics through visual representation of the numbers. I did this by carving incisions into the board on which I painted.  Each incision represents a murder occurring in a year to which the artwork refers.   The two works commenting in this way was: "19 728 Epitaphs for last year's murderer" and  "Butchered Rainbow".

"19 724 Epitaphs for last years's murderer". Acrylic on board

The murder statistics evoke a special response when the vastness of the numbers are visually displayed covering 6 panels, big enough to cover a wall form the floor to the ceiling, accounting for the murders that took place  2003/2004. This experience evoke a response contrasting  that of  a numbed society where hearing about murder statistics have become the every day norm.

"Butchered Rainbow".  Acrylic on board

Butchered Rainbow depicts the sun reflecting on an African landscape of long grass through which a stream of water runs.  Colors of red filter into the colorful stream with rainbow-like colors, representing our rainbow nation experiencing slaughter at ground level.  The murder toll is visually depicted in a graph, plotting the murder  statistics within the stream from 2001 to 2007.  On the panel below, murders for 2007's statistics of 18 700 murders are once again counted, and individually  represented by a hand carved stripe, each representing a life that was lost.  Butchered Rainbow was exhibited at the Florence Biennale in 2009.

As an  artists my intention is to sensitize a desensitized society to the value of human life in an aesthetically  beautiful but also  alarming way. These two works are like "pauses" between the body of the rest of my work, which usually concerns itself with life, joy, growth and the celebration of it. These works are not a political statement , nor do they provide solutions to the violence in SA.