Waenhuiskrans 

Curator: Immediately, I am struck by the gestural lines and the washed-out colors, creating a feeling of transience, almost as if the scene is dissolving before our eyes. Editor: Here we have "Waenhuiskrans," a landscape piece by Gregoire Boonzaier executed as a painting, that prominently features a line style in ink and watercolor. Curator: What strikes me about it is how raw and unpolished it is. Look at the exposed linework! You can almost trace the artist's hand as it moved across the paper. This brings up questions about labor: what did it mean for an artist of Boonzaier’s background to depict this scene, what relationship might he have had with this environment? Editor: The loose, free-flowing application, particularly in rendering the structure on the right side of the composition, definitely evokes the feel of Impressionism; but the stronger contours also remind us of classical line drawing. See how the brush and ink define every shape. I notice there isn’t any traditional use of perspective either, everything is nearly flattened in relation to everything else. Curator: The lack of traditional perspective you're pointing out makes the materiality even more prevalent, the tangible existence of labor! Editor: Certainly. What I read in it is a sense of immediacy and intimacy. We are drawn in with these marks. But going back to the context and place: how might we consider this piece in relation to local modes of production, such as perhaps fisheries and agricultural production in this region of Waenhuiskrans? Curator: It’s all there, implied in the modest scale of this structure, this human habitation built seemingly from what little material the site could afford. The piece evokes how individuals both exploit, and in return are subjected by their material environment. The landscape dominates despite the inhabitation! Editor: Yes! And to reflect finally, this interaction reveals an intimate dance of art; not just representation of something static. Curator: Ultimately a portrait of human action and interaction with the environment we've briefly illuminated here.