Last Sunday I stood in unbridled awe in the grounds of the most beautiful place Ive ever seen, and thought to myself, some people have made the most out of life and are living a high-quality existence. I was at the Nirox Sculpture Park near the Cradle of Humankind, about 45 minutes from the lunacy that is Johannesburg city life.
The Nirox Sculpture Park is the brainchild of former banker, Benji Liebmann, who, after retiring, built the place over the course of eight years. The result is a breathtaking union of art, nature and human resolve. The park is currently home to an exhibition called Twenty: South African Sculpture in the Last Two Decades, and includes awe-inspiring work by almost 50 of this county’s finest artists.
My love for art was satiated. At the same time, in that luscious garden, I couldn’t stop thinking, white people live exceptionally good lives. Sure, a few blacks have gotten the memo and are starting to enjoy the finer things such as fancy cars, gated townhouses and malls. But I am still acutely aware that it was white people who wrote the memo. It may not be a bad thing, but it’s a thing nonetheless.
The reason I ended up there in the first place was because I feel as though I don’t live as much as I exist. I needed to get into the car for pleasure and not necessity, because the to-do lists that govern my existence have left me bored and boring. I wanted to inject a little old-school pleasure into my existence — a little analogue to my digital.
Not far from the sculpture park is the downtrodden township of Diepsloot, which is a perfect example of the enormous fissure between those who live and those who exist. Driving through there on the way back to Jo’burg, I found myself thinking: “I wish more black people could live more.”
I recall a Sunday morning, a few months ago, when a cashier at a supermarket scanned and packed a box of croissants that were part of my groceries and asked: “What do these things taste like?” I was heartbroken that she had worked there for so long and never tasted them. I gave her one and had asked why she’d never tried them. Her shyly given answer was: “Because these expensive things are for white people”.
This isn’t about one race being wealthier than the other, but about the limitations that poverty and lack of exposure inflict on people’s minds. But life, as it happens, has its own small justices. The person who talked us through each artwork and told of the history of the Nirox Sculpture Park with admirable knowledge was a young black female curator-in-training who gently insisted I see a new work by conceptual artist Willem Boshoff. This simple yet poignant sculpture depicts the days that some prominent struggle heroes spent in prison during apartheid.
Neat lacerations, etched into slabs of stone, represent thousands of days spent resisting a terrible system. They are a reminder of the resilience one needs if one is going to make a move towards improving the lot of the underdog.