This exhibition is held in partnership with Griffin Art Projects and the Kromdraai Impact Hub. It includes both pre-existing and new works – produced during a ten-day woodcarving workshop, titled “Carving X Two” – by Dada Khanyisa, Collen Maswanganyi, Johan Moolman, Simon Moshapo Junior, John Nkhoma, Usen Obot, Ben Tuge, and Xwalacktun.

The workshop and exhibition focus on an age-old form of sculptural practice from a variety of contemporary perspectives, highlighting different approaches to relief work in wood (rather than rock or stone) as a mode of storytelling and its relationship to sculpture in the round.

Some works were created through assemblage and collage, where different pieces are joined to create a multi-textured whole. Most, however, were made by carving back from a single piece of wood. The motivations that underpin their making vary from one artist to the next. In some cases,

one finds a desire to preserve and educate audiences of one’s cultural heritage. Here, attention is drawn to oral histories and the place of relief, not as a substitute to the written word, but as its own form of communication; interpreted or understood, to varying degrees, based on one’s proximity or connection to the forms, images or inscriptions depicted.

Central here is the place of such insignia and the meanings attributed to them in the structure and organisation of life – whether religious, political, spiritual, or social – as well as the role of family and community therein. In other instances, the personal, poetic and fictional merge, foregrounding the various shades of social, economic and political life that animate our everyday.