Spirit van /Xam
Store Review (0)PRESENTED BY : /Xam Fortuin
| Frame | Dark brown, hand made by the artist |
|---|---|
| Medium | Mixed media painting |
| Height | 75.50 cm |
| Width | 59.00 cm |
| Artist | /Xam Fortuin |
| Year | 2020 |
Artwork: folded origami paper, cement, ink, oil pastel, acrylic and gauche on canvas.
Series: ancestral archive
Descrption: The name, given to me through my ancestral calling, ‘/Xam’, is the name that carries the ancient origins of the peoples of Southern Africa. /Xam is my San clan name and a dialect that stretched throughout the Western Cape, Northern Cape, into Botswana and Namibia. As is the case with most indigenous communities all over the world, the /Xam have been deeply affected by cultural genocide that was brought on by colonialism. In the late 1800’s a pair of researchers gathered male speakers from Breakwater Prison to record there cultural subjectivity, entering them into a dance with the colonial archival gaze. This archive has dominated cultural references of the /Xam for the passed 150 years. Therefore, a large portion of my masters project ‘Aba té Home – Journey to Robben Island’ dealt with the unraveling of this ‘gaze’ by inscribing my own cultural subjectivity through self-determined storytelling.
