Rambling over the mountain

When my mom was here on holiday earlier this month, she decided she wanted to go up Table Mountain – by cable car, not on foot! She’d never been up and the last time I’d gone up was years ago so we set off.

The cable car I’d been in was the Seventies design (– the cableway itself was opened in 1929 –) which was of course very much smaller and slower than the current cable cars which are circular and have rotating floors so that everyone gets a 360 degree view of Cape Town and Table Bay. The ride does seem far too short though..!

It wasn’t a perfectly clear day but we enjoyed taking our time – and plenty of photos of the surrounding mountains, the rocks and trails, the wildlife and fynbos – along the path that leads to Maclear’s Beacon. As the wind grew stronger and the clouds began blowing up, we had to head back to the upper cableway station and never quite made it to the highest point on the mountain.

Maclear’s Beacon was built in 1844 by Sir Thomas Maclear who was Astronomer Royal at the Cape. The 3 m cairn marks the highest point at 1086 m – though it could also be 1087 m, 1085 m or possibly even 1084.6 m! (There seem to be conflicting records out there...)

We were up on the mountain about three hours and did a lot more walking than we thought we would. There was also a section that was a bit steeper and I took some fun shots of my mom tackling the ascent, getting down low to take them so that it appeared all the more difficult..!

I didn’t know then I’d be scrambling up the mountain myself a few weeks later – but more about that in a later post...

At the lower cableway station

On the way up to the upper cableway station

Table Bay and the city down below

Lion's Head

Rambling paths

That steep bit...

Looking down at the city

On the way down – and the steps I’d soon enough be slogging up...

Owlish

In many parts of the world, owls have been – and may still be – associated with all kinds of dark and dreadful fears – of death, spirits both protective and sinister, witches and wizards, thunder and lightning, shipwreck and robbery, drunkenness, blindness, idiocy, whooping-cough, hair loss..! There’re just too many to mention.

But owls have also symbolised wisdom and knowledge – which is perhaps why a group of owls is called a parliament (– though I’m not convinced that all parliamentarians are wise and knowledgeable..!).

In South Africa too owls have been feared.

I grew up with an African scops owl in our garden. It used to perch in a big tree outside my brother’s window and we’d sometimes sit and watch it before it got dark. Scops owls are small, agile and solitary, and only have a single type of call – kind of a ‘prrrp’ every five seconds or so. It’s almost monotonous and not at all urgent, but it became such a comforting sound to fall asleep to. You can listen to it here: http://www.owlpages.com/sounds/Otus-senegalensis-1.mp3

Scops owls use their sharp beaks and powerful claws to kill their prey (mainly mice and rats) which they tear and swallow, regurgitating the indigestible parts (like bones and fur) afterwards. We used to find these pellets beneath the tree – they were quite dry and odourless, the tiny bones intact and easily identified.


These owls I sketched were, unfortunately, on display in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. I tried to capture something of their fascination and beauty anyway.

A barn owl

A slightly squint owl

A startled owl?

And for everything about owls: http://www.owlpages.com (And of course Wikipedia!)

Skin

This collage came out of an argument I’d had with a friend. I’d been disappointed at how stereotypical her favourite female fantasy characters appeared. They looked to me, despite their weapons and armour, like yet more Disney princesses: all big boobs and big hair – and very tiny waists. Princess Fiona they won’t..!

I was also critical of just how much more sexualised these women characters were than the men – and that she couldn’t (or perhaps didn’t want to) see that. Of course it’s not just the poses and pouts, and sidelong looks – it’s how much skin they’re showing. Unnecessarily, since I am sure that it’s safer, despite their vast knowledge and powers, to armour their midriffs when wreaking havoc or whatnot...

But, I wondered, am I spoiling all the fun – and perhaps fighting a losing battle? Maybe I am... After all, women’s nude or semi-nude bodies are all over the internet, right? Or are they?

Well, I thought I’d take a look... I did a Google image search of ‘skin’ and found plenty of anatomical diagrams of the skin – and plenty of young, perfectly make-upped, clean and clear, fair and female faces. And almost as many images of diseased skin!

On the internet (as in life?), skin seems to be perfect or problematic – good or bad! Or perhaps even ‘celebrity’... But, on the internet, skin is overwhelmingly one type.

I really had to search to find photographs of wrinkled skin, men’s skin, babies’ and children’s skin, skin of different colours and shades, skin on other parts of our bodies than our faces, and of different textures. Looking at this collage again, I realised I still hadn’t included any freckles and moles – of which I have many myself!

‘So what?’ you might be thinking. Well, I’d like to think the internet can be a whole lot more diverse and dynamic than that. And that there’ll still be a place on the internet for art that shows some skin, and meaningful conversations and arguments about it, in years to come...

So, here is a synthesis of a whole lot of skin on the internet – I’ve pilfered from so many people’s photographs but (in some kind of apology!) each has been edited so much as to be pretty unidentifiable (other than those of the tattoos of course).

A celebration of the largest organ of the body: the skin

And my last word in the above mentioned argument:

Women can be super and sexy, but many women around the world are still fighting all kinds of sexism to be the best – and sexiest – selves they can be.


And on that, I think, we can agree.

Stumbled upon

I stumbled upon these in Stellenbosch recently – they’re part of 20 Stellenbosch, an exhibition of South African sculpture created over the last two decades. Most of the sculptures are outdoor so intended to be ‘stumbled upon’ at various locations around town. This is perhaps the best way to experience sculpture – unexpectedly sharing your own everyday environment, but arrestingly so.

This figure is one of a pair called ‘Grounded I and Grounded II’ by Angus Taylor and is constructed of rammed earth (including stones and plant matter) and steel. Taylor says that the raw materials suggest ‘an innate awareness of belonging to African soil’. I love how solid and larger than life both figures are, but somehow still vulnerable to the changing weather and to everyday wear and tear. I also liked how this figure seemed to be – a little impatiently – waiting to cross the road.

This one is called ‘Fallen Angel’ by Beezy Bailey. Bailey describes his works as ‘frozen dreams’ and this figure made me think of Rene Magritte’s bright but cloudy skies. Although it appears to be a woman, Bailey calls himself the ‘fallen angel’ – perhaps a reference to the stunt he pulled back in 1991. He believed that the galleries were excluding his work in favour of black artists so submitted two for an exhibition that year: one signed in his own name and the other signed as ‘Joyce Ntobe’. The first was rejected while the second still has a place in the SANG’s (South African National Gallery’s) permanent collection (even after Bailey revealed the truth and caused a bit of a media uproar).

And this one is ‘Fly Away Home’ by Jaques Dhont and is made of black wattle bark, sheepskin, metal and cow bone (although this last piece is now surprisingly missing!). It’s based on the legend of the flying African which was common among the Georgia Sea Island slaves who believed that some of the African slaves who were taken to the US flew back to Africa. These Africans could magically just spread their wings and fly away. Robert Earl Hayden, an American poet, wrote a poem called ‘O Daedalus, fly away home’ which connected this myth to the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Wings, Dhont says, represent ‘a means of survival and flight becomes a symbol of detachment and transcendence’. 

'Do you remember Africa?

O cleave the air fly away home

Night is an African juju man

weaving a wish and weariness together

to make two wings

O fly away home fly away'

The sculptures will be on display for a year. You can see more of them at: http://20stellenbosch.co.za

Mama and me in India

Around this time, three years ago, my mom and I travelled to India together. It was a first for both of us – and it was also the first time my mom had travelled anywhere on her own.

I had friends from Kerala: a couple who were also teachers and living in South Africa, and some of the teachers I was working with at the time.

As I was living and working in the UAE, I met my mom in Dubai and we travelled on together from there. She did well to get to Dubai, despite a very last-minute hiccough with her visa that had been her travel agent’s mistake, and arrived looking just a little proud of herself and quite ready for our adventure.

And what an adventure it was... Before we’d even arrived, I had got sick so arrived very early in the morning, eyes and nose streaming, to find our guesthouse in Kochi (Cochin) not at all how it had been described – there was of course no mention of the smell, the noise or the mosquitoes on its website! Well, things could only get better... and they did – so much better!

We moved to a small hotel in Ernakulam and took the ferry across to explore Fort Cochin where we wandered through the narrow streets, stopping along the way at the markets and some of the historic buildings, and to watch the fishermen at the huge and striking Chinese fishing nets along the northern shore.

We hired a car and a driver (which was more expensive than taking the bus but still within our budget and a lot more comfortable and convenient) to take us up to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. It’s a green and hilly region filled with cardamom, tea and rubber-tree plantations. We stayed in Kumily and from there visited a spice garden where we climbed up to a viewpoint in the trees, rode an elephant through the forests at Elephant Junction (another first for us both and very brave of my mom!), spotted elephants in the wild around Periyar Lake and went on a short but quite strenuous walk through the forests around the lake, rafting across at one point – and hiding in the bushes when we heard something come crashing through the trees up ahead (– I’m still not too sure what that was..!).

We also took a day tour of the backwaters south of Kochi and some of the villages around. This was perhaps the best day of our holiday as it was such a leisurely trip and such a serene and beautiful part of Kerala.

And we met many friendly and helpful people, found much to laugh about (including, albeit affectionately, some of our more hippy fellow travellers) and so much to see and do. At the end of the holiday, we joked that we would go back one day in a far more hippy wardrobe ourselves. Maybe we will...

My mom’s motto for the trip: ‘Have daughter, will travel.’

At Jumeirah Beach, Dubai

At the fish market in Kochi (Cochin)

Stepping off the ferry at the Customs Jetty (Fort Cochin)

The higgledy-piggledy architecture of Ambadi in Kumily (http://www.hotelambadi.com)

A baby elephant at Elephant Junction near Kumily (http://www.elephantjunction.com)

At a spice garden near Kumily

On the backwaters south of Kochi

Mama and me..?

On the street

This may also be part of the Inside Out Project – it was at the same site in Woodstock and is also a black and white photograph pasted up – but it’s not a close-up portrait like the others and this little boy is much younger than the students from Hout Bay High. Perhaps it’s by one of the kids but not part of the original project.

It caught my attention anyway – just like I seem to have caught this little man’s attention too. There’s something quite grown up yet vulnerable about him, in his jacket that’s just a little too big and missing his shoes. Yet his look is as enquiring of me as I am of him.

And this too was on the same disused building. It's by Cape Town street artist Faith47. It looks to me like a baby elephant – collapsed, dead? Almost dreaming – or perhaps in the middle of a nightmare.

To find out more about Faith47: http://www.faith47.com/

Turning the world inside out

I spotted this in Woodstock. It’s part of French photographer and street artist JR’s Inside Out Project.

The Inside Out Project has been travelling around the world and the photographs that were taken in Cape Town were pasted up around the city over five days in July last year. The project aims to address problems specific to each area and in Cape Town it’s racism between black and ‘coloured’ young people.

Unfortunately there’s very little about the project on JR’s website or the Inside Out website but, after some searching for it online, I found the story behind it...

Inside Out Cape Town was a collaboration between local government, Lalela Project (an organisation which provides art and music education to children-at-risk after school and over the weekends), Cape Town photographers Hasan and Husain Essop, as well as JR. The Nelson Mandela Foundation also supported the project as it culminated on Mandela Day 2011, 18 July. Thirty Hout Bay High School students were taught the basics of portrait photography over two months by twin brothers Hasan and Husain. This group consisted of 15 students from Imizamo Yethu (the black community) and 15 from Hangberg (the ‘coloured’ community). The students from the two groups then paired up with each other (one from each community) in order to get to know the other person before photographing each other. JR’s team made the large-scale prints (some as big as 10 x 15 metres) and the kids then pasted their portraits up at each other’s homes and helped paste them up at a number of places around Cape Town, including the Central Library.

JR was awarded the 2011 TED prize. He's said that he wants to catch the attention of people who are not museum visitors. Most people don’t have museums around them or just don’t go to them – let alone pay to see exhibitions. He says his work ‘mixes art and action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit’. He also says that his art hasn’t changed the world – but it might have made someone somewhere laugh unexpectedly (http://www.jr-art.net/).

Well, this photograph made me smile. There’s just something irresistibly mischievous about someone pulling faces...

And I hope that the kids who participated found something that really involved them in the project – curiosity, openness, some recognition, a little more trust and understanding maybe?

At the time, one of the students from Imizamo Yethu Amanda Gaetywa said that pasting up the portraits of black and ‘coloured’ students side by side was ‘like we are bringing the two communities together.’ Another student Zimasa Dyani said that ‘at first we didn’t speak to the coloured people because we have been really separated from apartheid and now we have a stepping stone to communicate with them’ (Cape Times). Students continue to participate in Lalela Project’s programmes.

Watch this if you’d like to find out more about JR: 

If you’d like to participate in Inside Out (you can upload your own photographs which will be made into posters and sent back to you to paste up in your own area): http://www.insideoutproject.net

A SEN school in Margate in KwaZulu-Natal has also participated in the project – you can see their students’ portraits on the website.