Khoikhoi or San woman with her little boy Possibly 1777 - 1786

Curator: I'm immediately struck by the formal arrangement; it’s such an imposing verticality that makes you want to look closer! Editor: Well, let’s indeed invite our listeners into this… encounter. We’re looking at a watercolor and ink drawing from perhaps between 1777 and 1786, titled "Khoikhoi or San woman with her little boy". It's by Robert Jacob Gordon. What aspects are grabbing your attention? Curator: The gaze, for sure. There’s such dignity. She seems to be meeting my stare right where I am; I’m somehow confronted and seen by her at the same time. But then, I’m immediately aware of how *I’m* seeing *her* in the way Gordon is letting me, and I become acutely uncomfortable. Editor: Yes, it's complex. Gordon was a military man, a commander in the Dutch East India Company, but also a keen observer and recorder of the people and landscapes he encountered in Southern Africa. Curator: Right, this isn’t an innocent picture… I wonder what his intentions really were. Was he sincerely trying to document or, ugh, othering and exoticizing? The description below does include the word "caricature"... Editor: It is hard to ignore that possible, even probable reading. And it gets to a central tension: how to represent "the other." From a formal perspective, though, consider the stark contrast between the figure and the ground, her upright posture… the overall effect certainly commands respect, wouldn't you say? Despite its colonial-era context, Gordon’s work, in this work, holds, for me, unexpected strength. Curator: Mmm, you’re right. Despite everything—knowing when it was created, and by whom—the artwork itself still vibrates with some intense and unsettling human force. Editor: Agreed. Art can be such a tangled dance, where beauty and discomfort lock arms. And like all dances, it makes you move.