Page 210 - Tributaries Catalogue
P. 210
exclusion, and national
chauvinism. The metaphor of
”bodies in flow” takes on a
terrifying aspect in the depictions
he begins to show of flows
reduced to a trickle as, drop by
drop, body by body, a desperate
way is sought through gaps and
fissures in razor wire barriers at
arbitrary national borders. Other
bodies are forced into rigidly
regulated, one-at-a-time flows in
concrete official channels at
borders, and more explicitly
terrifying, bodies and blood rise up
in angry floods of violent attack or
energetic protest action. It is this
protest against xenophobia, that
registers, Nyoni shows finally, in
the work of three Zimbabwean
artists working in South Africa.
(left: detail, drypoint print,
Vulindlela Nyoni).
201
