Lady Skollie’s exhibition, Groot Gat, looks at the complexities of culture, belonging, and taking a leap into things that concern who you are.
“Groot Gat was inspired by the fact that if you are brown in South Africa you kind of have to deal with a big hole, a void, a gap of forgetting within your own culture and within your own remembering,” she says.
Her exhibition consists of paintings and a video installation of her paintings, which gives the impression that those who came before are whispering history through the brick wall that depicts elevated cave drawings, adding depth to the story Lady Skollie (aka Laura Windvogel-Molefi) is telling.
In her paintings, she imagines a place where her culture had a platform to thrive. Her cave drawings are big and bold.
“You are defined by a hole within your own history that you have to fill up with either stories, or traditions or making your own new traditions. But as an artist, I have kind of figured out that my paintings are what I use to fill this giant gap left by history, oppression and colonialism,” she says.
Lady Skollie tells the story of Boesmansgat in the Northern Cape, a natural sinkhole filled with water that is the sixth deepest cave in the world, which professional divers have explored, some dying in the attempt. Lady Skollie imagines that the cave is guarded by a giant cave drawing deity based on Dada (Coexʼae Qgam), an artist and storyteller from Botswana.
“Dada knows what she is doing. She is just filling up the cave with paintings, trying to lure the next victim to jump in and see what is on the other side of that long dark void.”
The souls of those who never make it back are collected by a watermeid, a mermaid in Karoo folklore, who gets strength from these souls. All this is told through a blue and clay-red painting that shows the mermaid carrying these souls over her head like the sun.
In true Skollie fashion, her art goes far beyond canvases on festival walls. She has a knack for storytelling and encouraging conversations about culture, its importance and its preservation.
The richness of the art is remarkable. The colours transport the viewer through Lady Skollie’s ideas and thoughts. She challenges us to take a leap to find and claim parts of ourselves we have forgotten or that society has shelved because they’re unimportant or dangerous.
As a child I would ask my elders about where we come from and how we came to be and I would be sent from one elder to another, each saying they can’t remember. From those conversations, I would pick up pain in their voices.
With this exhibition, I understand why it may be difficult to go back, but I also see the importance of why we need to go back. That may mean taking a leap into a void and hope that the spirit of the watermeid does not hold you captive.
Lady Skollie says: “At the end of my Groot Gat is a surprise because it is not a dark evil place. It is actually a place where the fantasy is real, a place where being brown is not a culture that’s nipped in the bud. A place where everything has extended and evolved to a point where cave drawings are large, our identities are intact and we know where we are coming from and where we are going.”
The Groot Gat exhibition is on at the Gallery in the Round, Monument Building, Makhanda, until 2 July.