all the stories of abuse and violation are stored with individuals.’
Andries Botha’s (1952) career as a sculpture has been marked by his truly innovative use of traditional African materials and methods to make large-scale pieces which are at once very bewildering, yet strike a deep cultural chord. In 1984, Botha’s exhibition ‘Human Structures’ consisted of a series of works created from thatching, wattle and wax. It was from this point onwards that Botha's work took on its specific characteristics - referencing inherited practices and locally symbolic materials, such as tyres and telephone wire, the works mesh Western and African culture.
‘I have always tried to use my work as a sort of visual testimony to the violation of the state. One of the functions of the intellectual is to create within their work a sort of archive of memory where the social discourses or the nation is plotted.’