"Blushing Bride"
Wedding Album Series
Digitally enhanced cut paper collage
February 3rd, 2009
I have been working on this series for a little more than a week and a half. The series has evolved perhaps subconciously into a rather satirical examination of the subject of 'child brides'...I have used a quasi-surrealist technique in the composition of these works to emphasize the absurdity...in my mind at least...the absurd nature of the practice.
Against my better judgement, I must admit that I am afraid that this work, these works, this series will be lost on my audience...
While living in South Africa in 2006, I took a series of ridiculouusly slanted art theory lecture courses and gained little else than a quote from a required reading- an article that I carry with me and often use as a barometer to measure my worth as an artist, to challenge my perspective on art and life and what art means to my life.
"On a continent where voice is a privileged means of expression, creativity does not speak […] a refusal to lay itself bare, to give in to the rules devised for and by others. A refusal to part take in self comment: ‘one does not recount oneself, one lives"
- Simon Njami Africa Remix 2005
