Man IV
145cm x 120cm
Pastel and charcoal on wooden board
2016
I
was welcomed into a misty morning of medieval romanticism. The
figures around me were all dressed in rags of variable styles and
gender objectives.
Layers upon layers of shirts and pants, with the last layer often
being a dress thrown over everything. Narrow fitting Jean skirts
were, strangely enough,
the norm, although I
don't know how anyone can move in a thing like that. I guess they all had
pretty long slits at the back.
Heads
were often hooded and necks scarved. Either a rubber sleeve, stretching from wrist to elbow, and fastened with thin
rubber lacing pulled through hand made eyelets
or layers and layers of
scarves and cloth covered the
non-dominant arm. This
was important because the scooping arm took the brunt of pokes and
scratches when handling sugarcane.
Being in
fact, nothing other than an
enormous species
of grass it has the
ability of inflicting grass cuts,
similar to paper cuts, in the world that we live in. After this, worker's boots
without which no-one
could navigate the uneven terrain and still produce his or her
quota. And finally the dreaded panga (slashing knife), of which many a
horror story of implementation to harm or murder have circulated our media. The knight's
trusted sword or grim reaper's dreaded scythe. It was otherworldly,
but had nothing to do
with a film set or
the latest copy of Bazaar.
All this are totally functional and were invented
by the workers for self
protection against nasty cuts
and lurking snakes.
They work in rows, one man per row and aim to do six rows in a shift. Or they work as a couple, man and wife. The man most often doing the cutting and the wife the stacking. By the end of the session a neat row of heaped cane reeds are left in one perfect row in the centre of six.
They start at 5am, of their own volition and work until about 11am, to take advantage of the coolest part of the day. In some cases they will even prefer to work at night, during full moon adding a dramatic picturesqueness to it all - I would imagine.
The
sugarcane has already been burnt a day
before and it has rained during the night before my visit, turning soot into ancient
war paint. Everything
became smeared with a diluted black: hands, faces, clothing. Little
flakes not fully combusted added texture.
The
sugarcane cutter has
great confidence in his
or her work. Their team
leader tells me that they would chase each other sometimes
to see who would finish
their rows
first. It's a matter of
pride.
In
Swaziland, there used to
be sugar-cutting
tournaments aired on
local TV, and the winner
stood in line to win a taxi!
Visually, I was drawn to their romantic clothing style, the soot they were covered in and their muscular strength and movement between the towering and fallen skeletal reeds.
On
a more symbolical
level,
I was exploring human
fragility and the cycle of life, death and resurrection.
Sugarcane became
a metaphor for our lives
and has its own
significant life cycle. Each year it is burned, cut down to the
ground and thereafter even poisoned to make it “suffer” in order
to increase its sugar content. Yet, it rises again in spring - like a
phoenix from the ashes, growing up to two meters in 12 weeks.
The burnt reeds are carted off and the life essence of the plant is crystallized from these as pure white sugar after a long process of crushing, diffusing and boiling, removing all impurities - an appropriate metaphor for resurrection and hope after adversity and tribulation.
The sugarcane cutters with their heads covered or hooded, their pangas scythe-like and depicted among the fallen sugarcane reeds remind us of grim reapers. Determined, they are still only there to do their job.
During my visit that week to the sugarcane cutters of Malelane, I made a most interesting trade
transaction. I wanted to obtain their dirty, old (and
amazing)
articles of clothing,
go back to my studio and try to create
fibre art pieces from these - an art genre that has long intrigued
me. I stumbled across a second hand clothing shop in town, which
was running a sale,
incidentally! I bought
mountains of articles of clothing and had a most exhilarating
(and sometimes scary)
bartering morning, the workers taking from my stash whatever they
fancied and there and then getting rid of their,
own,
tattered
rags, throwing them back into my boxes.
Oh, most
valuable possessions! Oh, art
materials!
These weathered rags
were the embodiment of
companionship
and allegiance
to
my sugar cane cutters. Clothing's
closeness to the wearer's body, always worn within the wearer's
milieu
becomes one with body movement, living and working.
They travelled home with
me as a personal part and token of my workers. Back
in the studio, these articles were taken apart and something
new was created from them
- dirty, besmirched and
sweaty, just as I received them.
"Man IV" 's clothing was used in
both "Land II" and "Land III", fibre artworks.
Above, in "Land II" it can be seen in the little blue and pink parts showing themselves in the lower right corner.
The
worker pausing at his work
in "Man IV" is
a strong and proud figure, accolades
which he both deserves AND requires
for his gruelling seasonal work. Many of these workers are migrant
workers and have farms of their own which they attend during off
season.
Work, and waiting, waiting and work, it may not be an abruptly ending linearity, but I imagine (and hope) for it to be rather a circular and never ending cycle like life, death and resurrection.
In
a poem from his publication Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, after
observations of graveyard grass, aptly describes our ending as he
sees it: “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses and to die
is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”