ilka

‘Shades of Africans’ is inspired by the theme ‘Post-colonial Africa’. It depicts 9 portraits of South Africans of different origins. All of them are surrounded by their family’s past. In typical Colonial fashion the portraits are in black and white. This is to be ‘colonially’ correct, but also to comment on South Africa’s past.

​

Surrounding the edge of the portraits, is a coloured sentence stating ‘a world without colour is a world without meaning’. Each of these letters is written in a specific colour, the colour relating to my synesthetic alphabet. This is the key to this work. For me a world without colour is unimaginable, since each alphabetical letter has its own unique colour association for me. This is also what is demonstrated in the poster alongside the portraits.

​

In my previous work ‘Reading Colour’ each letter of Salman Rushdie’s ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ is blocked out in the specific colour related to that letter. In this work the letters are blocked out, sure, but blocked out in black on a white background making the block unreadable even for me. The reason for using nine portraits is simple there are nine words in the sentence surrounding each portrait, therefore nine letter-less shapes on the corresponding poster.

South Africa is diverse in its heritage and this past, however tormented it might be, should be acknowledged and remembered. Only through awareness will we be able to heal and can reconciliation take its due course. We are still a young nation and in taking these photographs of a younger generation it became abundantly clear that they are all ready to let the past be in the past and that it is time to move on.

​

In the photos everyone is their own shade of grey, their own shade of African. All of us living our coloured lives.