White Elephant by Lizza Littlewort
28 March - 08 April 2007
OPENING: 18h30 WEDNESDAY 28 March 2007
Whatiftheworld / Artspace 373 Albert Rd. Woodstock
Oil Cartoons by Lizza Littlewort
Artist Statement
The lumbering, massive redundancy evoked by the phrase ‘white elephant’ is used here to comment on how it feels to be a white South African right now. South Africa’s famous political history presents convincing support for the argument that white people should never have come here, have been systematically harmful, and are not wanted.
The Holocaust, to which the apartheid regime is often likened, caused massive emotional backlashes of guilt and hurt on German people, from which they took several decades to recover. South Africa has had only twelve years. Even though a great deal has shifted and a feeling of lightness is entering many previously strained interactions, the tensions sometimes still run high and stereotypes persist. It is difficult, as a white South African, to talk about the pain one feels at being stereotyped without sounding like an apologist for the apartheid regime, or like one underestimates the damage it caused.
This exhibition is composed of ten rather sad jokes about how the artist feels being a white South African in this current situation. The aim of this work is not to engage in self justification, but merely to express something of how it feels to live in a historical era in which one is the bad guy.
