Ceramics is a medium which I worked with for quite a long time and I’m pleased to return to it. Medium, one which I hadn’t worked in for a long time. Brought about a whole lot of new formulas and conceptual considerations: the medium in its traditional sense, earth, subject to intense heat. It is a beautiful metaphor, one that would suggest transformation, fragility, earth, body.
Obviously, our entire western sensibility has been shaken by the events of the assault and collapse of the Twin Towers in the US: that which would appear to have been in violated, now being assaulted, attacked, transformed and we have been changed forever. We had considered that perhaps all that which we had had and made that we built upon massive discomfort, disease of so many people: so much so to have resulted in such an acrimonious event. It would seem to me, at that time and still today, that everything we had constructed around reason, consideration, theory, science, all of our logic, all of our sensibility all of our civilizational dimensions had now been put into question.
It was then that I decided that, to construct a tower made out of a series of limits of measurement because each of the components were exactly a fixed unit of measure. And out of each unit of measure I could construct a square which seemed to me to suggest such balance and perfection within the lexicon of reason. And number of squares built into a number of squares, built into a cube, built into one cube on top of another cube, somehow systematically defined everything that we were about and the certainty with which we could order our universe and all of the sudden all of this crumbled and brought everything to question.
That in a sense was the basis for the making of the work: something subjected to intense heat and fire could bring about a complete shift which firt of all resulted in order and then the same heat and fire would then collapse that order. All things are impermanent, all things are subject to change, despite our feeble human attempts to deny that that is the natural order of things.
So, I wanted to create a metaphor that in many senses was not only about the metaphor of the tower in its own historical and cultural context that has been assaulted, but that the very basis along which values have been built and had also been assaulted and that we will never ever be the same again. I think that is the basis for the work.
Reflecting on the work 15 years later brings about a similar – but also different – emotions and feelings. It’s also – it’s always – interesting to look at your work later, in order to be able to assess the validity and the strength of your values, with which you put them together with at the beginning. Certainly history has shifted in such a way that our entire system is now endemically contested and it’s almost as if the 9/11 Towers stands as enduring metaphor for that moment in history when all things changed forever. What is for me symptomatic of work is not necessarily what the work represents as a physical object, but more what the work now reflects upon and contemplates as a metaphorical object.
It seems to me our humanity has become indelibly, irrevocably changed and it seems that that moment stands at a time when boundaries of our common shared humanity shattered and fragmented into separate little components that seem to be impenetrable: that means that we have very little in common, but we have distinct points of difference and collision at an intercultural level, at an inter-economic level, sociological level. Our humanity in a sense has become irrepairably wounded.
That’s what’s interesting for me about the work. At a purely formal and conceptual level, reflecting back on the work, I was interested when I looked at the video and the replaying of the video, the destruction of order and then the resurrection and the re-imposition of order: each of those units of measure as they collided and collapse on the floor, became fractured and broken and each one had to be put back together again, almost bandaged back together again. Perhaps it is true that things are wounded and cracked in order that another measure of light can actually pass through them, so that they can illuminate in a different way whereas a whole healthy metaphor, a healthy order, a healthy object without flaws seems to be completely inappropriate for our own fractured time and that a wounded object is now more appropriate.
So the object that is now represented in fact is a wounded object, it’s a wounded piece of logic, it is a wounded structure.
Reflecting on it now I am surprised that it still remains fresh to me in its metaphorical representation: that means when I look at it, I feel it has vitality and relevance not only at the aesthetic, but also at the formal and conceptual, but also at the sociological, at the cultural level. So it becomes a metaphor for us as a collective and individual society that our wounded-ness is perhaps a more appropriate metaphor for our humanity. It is a moment in history when we all became individually and collectively wounded: that’s why I think the metaphor is so powerful.
I think formally and conceptually building structure using ceramic elements that have been subjected to such intense heat speaks for itself.
I think I’ll simply be repeating what I already said in the first part about what motivated me. What motivated me is still clear, succinct now that I reflect upon it, I think those original idea haven’t shifted I think, they have value.
The fact that the curator found the work in the store room of the museum, I´d almost forgotten about the work, I had thought the work have been lost. Artists become accustomed to the idea that their works may disappear and get lost, and get broken up, and thrown away so it is absolutely delightful for me to know that the work still exists and that the work will be shown I think that the work should be seen. I think it has weight, it has value, and that´s what surprises me but I made it at a time I was very excited about more formal and conceptual motivations but now I am excited that the work has a metaphorical weight and that time and history has supported and sustained that weight. So I am very pleased the work will be seen and held and hopefully cared for.
Andries Botha was born on the 22nd September 1952 in Durban (Kwazuw – Natal / South Africa) and has been a professor at Durban University of Technology since 1982. During his long artistic career he has held many international exhibitions in many different nations all over the world; from Norway to Mexico, from Holland to India, Germany, the United States, Spain, France, Africa, the UK and Italy, where he exhibited in Venice and Albisola, at the Biennale di Ceramica dell’Arte Contemporanea (Contemporary Art Ceramic Biennial) in 2003. Known to be a great activist for environmental issues, he has always used his art to communicate important issues such as sustainability. As a matter of fact, one of his most famous works is dedicated to elephants. Moreover, through the Human Elephant Foundation, Botha partakes in a project on environmental sustainability in South Africa through targeted projects in primary and secondary schools. Art as a vehicle of important human and social values also lies at the center of his most recent work, “Rhino Burning”, which focuses on fossil fuel problem. Over the course of his career, Botha has received several international awards, such as the Volskas Atelier Merit Award (1987), the Cape Town Triennal Merit (1988), the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (1990) and the National Life Art Award (1992).
