CUTTINGSCuttings grew from the ground of contested belonging. In South Africa, attachment to land has rarely been simple, rarely settled, and seldom without blood. The Cape Frontier Wars, nine wars fought between 1779 and 1879, left scars not only in the earth but in the stories carried forward and the silences inherited. The amaXhosa resisted for a hundred years, and that resistance was systematically written out of the official record.
“Her collaboration with several women in Keiskamma embroidery and art project resulted in art works that were both unsettling and comforting.”
CAROL HOFMEYR
- Doctor, Fine Artist, Founder of the Keiskamma Art Project and Trust
2020 marked 200 years since the arrival of the 1820 British Settlers in the Eastern Cape, strategically placed as a buffer between the amaXhosa people to the north and British-ruled territory to the south. As a direct descendant of the 1820 Settlers, this history was not abstract to me. It was inherited, personal, and impossible to look away from. That river boundary was not only a line drawn through terrain, it was a line drawn through shared humanity.
