Tilted Hierarch of Needs (2025)
A body of work comprising the following artworks spanning mixed-media, paper-based photography, collage and photography: "Tipping Point" (2025), "Crosslines" (2025), "Siphoning millions from NSFAS meant for needy students" (2024) and "Foreshadowing Life Esidimeni (Zulu for dignity): Altering Hierarchy of Needs" (2024).
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Tipping Point (2025)
Handmade, moulded paper: Fabriano Rosapina, Fabriano Cromia, Shredded South African note money prints, Abaca
Series of 3 pieces: 2100x800mm each
Tipping Point (2025) is a sculptural triptych constructed from handmade paper and shredded South African banknotes, moulded to resemble the familiar form of corrugated asbestos roofing sheets. The surface, fragile and uneven, bears the marks of its making—soaked, pressed, and dried into place—evoking both the visual memory and material trace of decay. Leaning at a deliberate angle against the wall, the three components of the work form a precarious triangle, an unstable geometry that alludes, obliquely, to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This work emerges from the ongoing scandal surrounding the 2014 R255 million asbestos audit and replacement tender in the Free State, a project riddled with irregularities and overseen by former premier Ace Magashule and other implicated individuals. Though the tender was ostensibly issued to remove hazardous asbestos roofing from vulnerable homes, not a single sheet has been replaced. The funds, however, have been spent. What remains is absence: of accountability, of justice, of shelter. In Tipping Point, the act of soaking shredded currency in water and reconstituting it into the form of shelter speaks directly to the laundering of both money and responsibility. The material process of dissolution and remaking becomes a quiet metaphor for corruption—its mechanisms, its consequences, and its cost. The paper’s fragility, its breaking points, and the delicacy of its surface signal a state of exposure, echoing the bodily vulnerability of those left to inhabit these contaminated structures. The title resonates on several registers: a moment of crisis, a structural threshold, the possibility of collapse. It also gestures toward tipping as bribery, and tipping off as the courageous act of whistleblowing. In this triangulation—between need, power, and complicity—the work poses a question: What does it mean when the most basic of human needs are bartered away for personal gain? And at what cost do these transactions occur?
Crosslines (2025)
Photographic print on Archival Photographic Paper
Series of 3 prints: 337.50 x 600 mm each (framed)
Crosslines (2025) is a series of three aerial photographs I captured with a drone in May 2025, documenting illegally dumped asbestos at the National Hospital in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Following recent renovations, the hospital discarded asbestos roofing material on its premises, even though the use and dumping of asbestos have been illegal in South Africa since 2008. The title refers to both the visual crossed lines present in the compositions — formed by discarded beams, cables, and debris — and the metaphorical crossing of ethical lines through the neglect of environmental and public health responsibilities. The work highlights the irony of a medical institution, a place intended for care and healing, becoming a site of contamination and danger. Through this series, I aim to reflect on systemic neglect, blurred lines of accountability, and the consequences of infrastructural disregard within the urban landscape.
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