Description
The title Amnesia brings a profound and tragic depth to this powerful figurative work. The piece confronts us with two male figures, bound by the same space yet separated by time and experience. One is in his prime, a figure of substance and strength, while the other is aged and frail, his body almost translucent as if he is fading away. They are the same man, separated by a lifetime that has been erased.
This is a poignant depiction of the self, fractured by the loss of memory. The younger man cannot recognize the ghost he will become, and the older man has lost the memory of the strength he once embodied. They are strangers to each other, their shared history severed. The two sheep at their feet add to the sense of dislocation; they are symbols of a pastoral life, of innocence or of a flock, but the connection to their meaning seems to have been forgotten. Rendered in rich, earthy tones, the piece is a masterful and heart wrenching meditation on how identity is anchored in memory, and how, without it, we become a ghost to our own past.
Artist: Irda-Adri Rademeyer (SA 1989)
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