This series of works from my undergraduate studies is the starting point for all my subsequent art, particularly regarding the use of materials, technical processes, and thematic focus.
The central motif across all these works is the (male) body. This focus served as a mean to explore my libidinal drives and gay sexuality within a dual context: a narrow, religious upbringing, alongside an AIDS epidemic that had been raging for a decade and cast a heavy stigma over gay identity.
To navigate this landscape of emotion and desire, I employ materials loaded with association. The fiberglass mannequins—coated in high-gloss enamel—present idealized, generalized, yet highly improbable renditions of the healthy male physique. This glossy finish references the surfaces of a bathroom or steam bath, evoking the world of cruising: an arena that felt novel and thrilling to me at the time, yet frightening due to the reality of AIDS. The toweling material reinforces this connection by recalling both the steam bath environment and the clinical setting of a hospital.
In addition, I incorporate Indian cotton—a textile typically used in industrial and medical applications—to introduce associations of care and healing. Within this framework, embroidery functions as a metaphor for surgical stitches and recovery, while paying homage to the feminist art tradition from which many gay artists have drawn inspiration. On several panels, this embroidery expands to include text.
Beyond these tactile materials, the series relies heavily on photography of the male body, printed onto transparent substrates and integrated into sculptural and installation works.
Darling, 2026
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Below is an artist’s statement I wrote in 1995 for Revue Noire, a quarterly magazine dedicated to contemporary African art published by Éditions Revue Noire from 1991 to 2001. These works were featured on pages 14–15 of Issue 19 (Dec. 1995–Feb. 1996), titled AIDS and African Artists.
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, SEX
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
Stanley Kunitz, The Testing-Tree
My work is the result of the outrage and frustration engendered by prejudice and social injustice in a time when every 30 seconds a human life is lost to AIDS. Although I mourn the deaths of the thousands already lost to the epidemic, I will nevertheless go on to celebrate the love, friendship, and sex that happens between men as one of the most beautiful things in life. I will not allow myself to indulge in the views of pathetic moralists who claim the epidemic to be some kind of divine retribution as a result of queer promiscuity, which can only lead to a sorry state, but rather to celebrate and enjoy those moments with friends and lovers that makes life worth living.
In my work there is a search for a kind of redefinition and re-evaluation of my perception of matters such as life, death, sex, aging, the body and spirituality. I think that the aids epidemic is one of the main concerns for a need for a new way of thinking and living. Aids, then become, not the unfortunate and fatal disease that is threatening human existence, but part of our post-modern condition which requires a whole new mindset and the way we perceive time and relate to each other as human beings.
Johannesburg, September 1995