Insatiable 1996

In my work, the motif of the sewing machine first appeared in the two works titled "In Memory of Two Lovers".

Both works were inspired by a sewing machine displayed in the South African Police Service (SAPS) Museum in Pretoria as part of their collection of real forensic evidence and murder weapons. The sewing machine, still covered in places with dried blood, relates to a 1987 case in which Marthinus Esterhuizen beat his partner of nine years to death with it during an altercation. Esterhuizen subsequently committed suicide while being held for questioning.

This story moved me deeply because it touched on themes of gay shame that I was experiencing at the time, and the accompanying self-hatred that can lead to self-harm and the destruction of those closest to us. As a murder weapon, the sewing machine embodied this shame. Gay sexuality is often stigmatized through its association with femininity, an attribute tied directly to the sewing machine and its traditional place in the domestic sphere.

In Afrikaans, the word "sewing" translates to naai, which also colloquially means "to fuck." This double meaning informs the word "Insatiable"—rendered in one of the works through pinpricks on paper behind a sewing machine. Both the word and its execution are borrowed from the cover of a gay erotic novel, while the blue pool light references a well-known bathhouse I frequented at the time. Ultimately, the work not only memorializes gay love, but also celebrates sex between men.

The convergence of events in 1987 — in which Cleve Jones made the first official memorial panel for the international AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman, and Esterhuizen beating his lover to death with a sewing machine — was of particular importance to me. It connects two forms of commemoration: one a reflection on two lives destroyed by gay shame, and the other the creation of a memorial quilt that remembers and celebrates our community and same-sex love through the medium of needlework.