CATEGORY ERROR 2 , AVA , Cape Town (2010)
“UMLUNGU PRINT” WALL PANEL
Artist: Jane Solomon
Medium: Upholstered printed fabric
Dimensions: 2.3m X 1.45m
This print shows the boats that brought my European ancestors from across the sea. They left for economic reasons (finding a better life) and to flee persecution.
200 years later my South African family has, perhaps in themselves, as white Africans become a Category Error. European and Southern African myths and stories morph. For me the shapes of the Greek, mythological goddesses Artemis and Venus (placed in silhouette in front of the boats) become African.
“Umlungu” is a Xhosa word meaning “from the sea” or “the foam on the sea” and is used in the South to refer to white people. In the Greek myth Venus too was born from the foam on the sea. The Umlungu print links European myths to an African existence.
I have created the print to look like Dutch delft tiles that are seen in many old buildings in Cape Town The repeat pattern echoes an African textile tradition. The panel is a tongue in cheek monument to the arrival of my ancestors
FAMILY BAGGAGE - BEYOND THE PALE
Artist: Jann cheifitz
Medium: Digitally Printed fabric
Dimensions: 80cm X 50cm X 30cm
An outsize tote with family crest symbolically containing all the inherited traits and history that I carry with me wherever I go. The bag holding sand/earth history, burials, roots, buried treasures, memories connections and for construction, reconstruction and building materials for the future.
The family crest is imagined and created in a format similar to a “kanga” design-with “my great granny Annie” representing the matriarchy of the family-and located in a traditionally “African” design. She is commemorated and surrounded by symbols from my family history. ‘Beyond the Pale’- which refers to the PALE OF SETTLEMENT- the area of Russia wherein Jewish people where restricted around the turn of the 19th century. And refers to moving outside and beyond of the boundaries that we are born into.
The background mapping of the design represents the history of my family. As we have traditionally moved around the globe taking with us only our culture, assimilating and adapting as we move.
Seems like no matter what the travel restrictions are- I’m lugging so much around with me… like my ancestors before me, a load as heavy as my heart that leaves behind loved ones
