The “pencil test” refers to the old apartheid custom of confirming the ethnic disposition of an individual by inserting a pencil into an individuals hair. This is due to the fact that ‘indigenous’ Africans` hair was seen as being particularly curly – what is called “kroeshare” in Afrikaans (“frizzy, wooly, crinkly hair” according to the Tafelberg bilingual dictionary). Thus, it was thought, that if the pencil remained stuck in ones hair, you were ‘black’.

A pencil is in itself a loaded symbol: in art it is used to make drawings/ pre-sketches; in the education system it is normally given to young children to use when they start writing. Its marks are easily erasable and as a medium it is cheap and widely available. Also, it is rarely used to make ‘final marks’ – it is seen as being transient and for the most part not used as a serious art medium.

Using pencils to cover my face, as hair extensions, to stick large quantities of them in my mouth until I gag and even to make body costumes was, and still is, an interesting way for me to re-interpret my heritage (as a ‘white’ African) living in postcolonial South Africa. I enjoy the multivalent nature of the object, especially in relation to the discussion of ‘identity’ in our global context – it manages to draw links between the theoretical and practical issues of infancy, ideology, art and politics without it becoming a purely cerebral exercise in aesthetic terms: I think it both interesting to look at as a sculptural object and interesting to think about as a conceptual element.