Barnard is pleased to present Lien Botha's solo project Lost in Translation opening on 13 April 2021.
"It is a curious thing to reflect on the ‘static’ content of your youth fifty years after the event. And so, in search of a past/present continuum I have merged the individual characters of the young protagonists Saartjie and her brother Boet, their father, mother and dog Buks, into the recent South-African landscape. Re-framing the past into a comic-style genre allows for playful undertones whilst referencing current issues such as the notion of ‘home’ in a fragile social and natural environment.
The naive figures of Boet and Saartjie, juxtaposed with mostly external landscapes, results in a tension between the seemingly playful characters, gradually being usurped by the very landscapes they inhabit ̶ alluding to the futility of reminiscence when grafting the figments of a colonial past." Lien Botha
