Souvenirs of Lynching
Acrylic, terracotta, shellac on canvas; 61'' x 28'' x 8.5'' (155 cm x 71 cm x 21.5 cm);  2022
Derived from historical archives of lynched bodies that hung like flesh from trees, decaying for months and becoming symbols of terror for the colonised and voyeuristic amusement for the colonisers. On close inspection, the minute scars harken to those on whipped bodies of slaves, before the aforementioned death ritual
 

Madonna holding child
Acrylic, terracotta, shellac on canvas;   47’’ x 24” (119 x 61 cm);   2022
In my paintings, I seek to abstract the human form, with the images being derived from colonial archives. With abstracting these archived brown bodies, I recontextualise the white gaze towards its 'primitive' subjects.
In 'Madonna Holding Child', I reconcile the popular divinal European subject with the people of my homeland. The paint is painstakingly applied in ten or more layers and then going over with a chisel, I excavate into the painting, forming wounds on the body.
An experiment into the materialization of collective trauma, the grief of existence and death experienced through wounds of bygone violences on the body- as lived through ancestral genocides
 

Portrait from the homeland
Acrylic, terracotta, shellac on canvas;   2022

The Suffered Wounds of the Brown Skin
Burlap, canvas, wax;   45'' x 52'' (114 x 132 cm);   2021
Using process as metaphor, I looked at the politics of tearing something apart only to stitch it together. The activities of destruction only to subsequently resuscitate, thus altering the integrity of the outcome— a metaphor itself for the decolonial process. Burlap (an identifier of brown community), is suffered in a self-deprecated and humiliated action of destruction, forming acute scars on its form, only to then be weakly stitched back together in a feeble effort; still decaying, still falling apart.