Today I saw originals of Olaf Hajek for the first time at the Whatiftheworld Gallery. He's a Berlin based illustrator / artist who's work I really like and follow since some time. To see it as originial it's even more beautiful.
First thing this morning, Ricky and I went to get paint! yea! black, gold, fluorescent red, mint, turquoise, blue, skyblue, fever red, sun yellow, fluorescent yellow, white... Then I went to finish the circle of white for my woodstock peacock and got invited by the landlady Azeeza to have a roti and a cool drink. And the kids made me a whole stack of drawings while I was painting.
In the evening we got invited to Jaspers house and a superdelicios dinner. He invited all the pro helvetia artist in residence and their coaches to such good food and conversation and dalmatian patting!
Afterwards my friends Marcii & Adel (who's birthday it was) organized a Nightmarket where I had the honor to dj. These fotos I found on Adam Kent Wiest's fb... how beautiful they are!! Check out the webpage of the market.
and then Remy Gold and I went for some more djing for Rickys sisters birthday! the hangover was B.A.D. but worth it! :)
Couldn't sleep anymore even if it was still dark with just a few stripes of yellow at the sky and the morningstar shining really bright. The morningstar always reminds me of my grandmother who was very special to me. It was nice to see the star that specific morning as it happens to be the birthday of my mother.
Later on Ricky and I went to have breakfast in town and on a trip along the coast. It was very, very beautiful and even more windy. And we had some good ideas for my show and future projects.
Spoek Mathambo is a musician from Johannesburg. With super beats and bass, clever lyrics and a good style. His promotracks is what I've listened the last few days. Check him out!
Ricky and I got invited to Rick's 30iest birthday at his sister Ree's oh so incredible house.
What a pleasure it was, intresting conversations about music and myth and god and the world. Lucha Libre live and projected and Paulitas delicous cooking!! :)
Also the sky gave a spectaular show in honour to the end of the day.
Umnati took us to visit Guguletu, the township where his home is. It was a very intence experience. We had lunch at a butchers restaurant. The preparation of the meat was very good. The place simple and nice. The other guests all dressed up nicely and well fed. We were the only white people. And we were a table of ca. 10 which drew a lot of looks. I felt, even though we've been invited by locals, as if we were invading. Even now writing this text, sitting in my spacous studio at my mac book, beeing invited as artist in residence, having all this opportunities.... and seeing people living in houses where the windows are fixed with cardboard, in the backyard the water is standing, green and full of trash. People deal with rats, H.I.V. and drugs. Lack of education and jobs. It does not feel right at all and brings up alot of thinking.
These pictures are of the cultural centre Umnati and his friends run. The fish you see is drying to be sold.
At this one day at the beach with Juan, Marc and Felix this idear of making the Backoven Bar came up. And that's how it looked in the end. More fotos on the we are visual blog.
Also Peter Aeschlimann, a videoartist from Bern arrived today to stay at the /a word of art residence for 3 month. He has his own blog aswell. Willkomä!! :)
I did my first work in my huge studio at the Woodstock Industrail Centre. It's an amazing to have somuch room! It took me few days of just sitting in it enjoying the spacousness and the view on the church!
For the «Guten Tag» show I made the 3rd piece of my serie «MY HEART SO WHITE», inspired by the book of the same name written by Javier Mariaz.
White represents naivity. The heart emotion. In this serie it's about the naivity of the individual getting hard-pressed by reality. The burned and and cut mearmaid is symbolic for repression of races, myth and tradition. The light colourd cow represents capitalism. For the people convinced of the constant grow and profit maximisation.
I verymuch like to listen to audiobooks while working. When I have a good one to listen to I can keep on working for hours. While working on «Mein Herz So Weiss» I found this great audiobook based on the movie «The Golden Compass» on youtube. The link is attached beneith.