Kwere Kwere 2007

The artwork Kwere Kwere comments on the current “language dilemma” we are facing in South Africa. Children are being deprived of a good education because of their inability to express themselves in the language used by the teachers in the classroom as well as their mother tongues at home. The artwork can be described as representing a “contemporary” mural for a New South Africa. It comprises of eleven radios framed in red and arranged in a typical geometric pattern on a black and white wall, as well as three horns mounted underneath the hanged radios forming their speakers. Thus the viewer will hear cacophonic sounds on entering the space.

The three horns refer to various aspects of this particular situation experienced by South Africans. For example, cattle horns has been traditionally used by both Western and African people to announce war as well as to call the people together; thus referring to the binary situation we currently find ourselves in: Either declaring a language war or to come together as one nation and focus rather on communication than on language.