Zach Taljaard

The work originated from a work entitled ‘The freedom to dream’. This work was conceived for the Sunday Times Heritage project and was intended to celebrate an event in our Apartheid past where East beach, a popular whites only swimming area in East London in the Eastern Cape was claimed on a specific New year’s day by thousands of none-white holiday goers. To celebrate this brave act a public sculpture was commissioned as part of the Sunday Times Heritage Project as a beacon to celebrate the freedom achieved for all. The artwork was of a black boy sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean, cradling in his arms a sailing boat, a symbol of a new beginning, hope and dreams to come. The irony was that the work only lasted two days after installation during another Festive season as it was severely damadged and brutally vandalized with beer bottles and removed from the site never to be shown again. For me as an artist this was even more ironic as my previous body of work investigated violence to children, and this act indirectly to me spoke of As the work was a one off cast in resin a original copy in plaster remained which was used for the final mould making process. Utterly disappointed and saddened by the event I reworked the original plaster cast for an installation which was scheduled to be shown at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. The reworked copy simply titled ‘Heritage’ looked at the very thin line between an acceptance of difference and the festering explosive hatred situation that do still exist between different races in our post-Apartheid society. This time the boy was cradling a Boer baby surrounded by tourist kitch from the sixties which amplified otherness made out of A freak accident had the work blow over the day before opening leaving the work to shatter into millions of pieces, and ironically only the head of this original sculpture remained.