The visual chronicles of an artist in transit on the African continent. They are short installments of the experiences you collect when you move between destinations, be it for professional reasons such as attending a Biennale in Bamako or a family event at the foot of the Magaliesberg, in Gauteng. They are the kind of images that may appear insignificant, almost tentative - and often they only materialise in their sequential or symbolic links - after the event.
Between the various images and connecting them, is the underlying reference to paradise lost. In this Yonderland the animals are all either stuffed or synthetic or a placid participant on an ice skating rink (in a hotel outside Nairobi for instance).
The narrator has maintained a sense of wit in her wanderings through the expansive chaos of our contemporary landscape. Her commentary is on our lostness, our fragmented reality, an impossible trip.
The road alternates shadows and headlights with a chaotic disagreement “to where?”, Alice wonders. Tembisa, Mamelodi, Katlehong in the middle lane, and for them the left lane towards Faerie Glen. Ohne Dich ends, thank God, she couldn’t take another minute of the forest so black and empty. On YouTube someone posted the song as Stalingrad. It’s nearly dark now, the invisible hour closing in with the ancient force of Neanderthal’s melancholia indicating the primal time of hunters sniffing out the fear of the hunted. First it gets hot then it gets cold in the end it hurts, Amour Amour…Love is a wild animal caught between your teeth… “Don’t you all think this soundtrack would be spot- on for a contemporary version of Hamlet? ” They hum in accordance and Alice feels good, since approval from the clan, however warped, always gives one a sense of temporary well-being in this world.
Lien Botha 2012