'HOME' public performance by Art Pays

where the heart is

beneath layers
and painted projections
where i seek. and build
change and become
the place no-one can move me from
home



all photos by nathan heller:

A powerful rite of passage. A game of paper houses. And four performance poets speak their hearts on home, to the sound of a jazz violin. Into the rush of Cape Town's largest inner city shopping mall, the Golden Acre, comes a performance about land ownership and forced removals. One performance only. Don't miss it!



'home' is a free public performance happening once only: next Friday afternoon, the 29th May, at 1pm in the golden acre off adderly street, cape town, as part of the Cape 09 biennale.
It is put together and performed by the collective Art Pays, with the help of co-ordinater: Shamila Rahim.
Artists are: Rampedi Molefe, Daya Heller, Kai Lossgott, Bulelwa Basse; Poets from Lyrical Base project: Wanelisa Albert, Illverse Senteni, Jeisie Bassie, Khululeka Rulumeni; + violinist: Lara Sadler.
We will be intervening in a public space of ordinary traffic with something unexpected and extra-ordinary...
It will exist in time and space for only a brief moment.
Please come and join the experience...

portraits. hearts. prints. exhibition at olympia cafe

DAYA'S CERAMIC HEARTS

watch out for my new ceramic hearts to be for sale in kalk bay modern gallery above olympia cafe and other outlets coming soon. or can be ordered directly from me, or custom made: R400
See there are ones that go on the wall; 3-d hearts to hold; and hearts that open like boxes. Each one is unique.

nature lover

photos by alexia webster





I performed for kai lossgott in the 'Fleet of Art' (performance art in a bakkie) in the infecting the city festival of performance art last month in his piece: "nature lover"... Where I ate a lettuce under a shower in a camo tracksuit and bright red wig, in the back of a bakkie which drove around the city centre. It was rad fun. People loved it. and couldn't quite believe their eyes... Photos by Sean Wilson.

ROCK . LOVE valentines gig at Albert Hall

Nathan put this kiff show together with bands mama know nothing and them tornadoes and asked me to do the decor seeming I have so many hearts! some are ceramic, some are plaster, resin, cement and even welded steel. my hearts are made of everything! it looked dashing and smashing if I may say so myself. valentino.
more hearts coming soon and to be for sale. X

NEW MISFIT STOCK

Go have a peek and purchase brand new at Misfit on Long

CANVAS for Mark

1 x 1.5m digital print of photoshopped drawing on canvas + oil paint + goldleaf + embroidery.
for Mark the musician, greenpoint cape town.

ART PAYS PERFORMANCE

SAT. 6 DECEMBER. PERFORMED AT ST GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL. 11AM. WITH MEMBERS OF NEW COLLECTIVE: "ART PAYS". LAUNCHED AS PART OF IKAPA SESSIONS VIA CAPE AFRICA PLATFORM. That's me in the wedding dress.

MERMAID

sculpted in 3 weeks with angela macphearson in her studio in kalk bay for new restaurant in camps bay: the bungalow. she's up and beautiful go have a look. Her name is "Pearl". She has a song.

NIEU BETHESDA

CULTURAL EXCHANGE WITH 9 SWISS ARTISTS AND 9 SOUTH AFRICAN ARTISTS.
for 10 days in tiny town Nieu Bethesda in middle of Karoo - home to Helen Martin's Owl House. We then travelled to JHB to present the project at the bag factory.

RHINO ROOM commission

The new nightclub: The Rhino Room, off long str, commissioned me to weld a steel framework rhino head - to be attached above the bar.

what ACTUALLY happened at AFRIKA BURNS 2008

The plan changed from people to raindrops. Into the sculpture: 'Rain Desert'. Angela was going to build a dancing girl. We wrote this poem: "And in the heat she danced. and in the rain she danced. In the sun and in the wind and in the flood, she danced. In the calm and in the storm... Always she danced."
And then the dancer left the raindrops and the drops became seeds.

puppetmaking for Janni's "COCONUT"

coming soon

ROCKING THE DAISIES

I helped Buffi build a giant daisy for the rocking the daisies festival.

VENETIAN MASK commission

Infacet is a jewellery shop in Newlands who commissioned me to make venetian masks for the launch of their new premises.



PROCESS

JOURNEY - performed for Out the Box Festival

“JOURNEY” (2007) is a performance piece with life-size, figurative sculptures: “PRAY” and “PHOENIX” (2006). It explores dichotomies of ascent and descent, past and future, growth and stagnation, creation and negation, moving and still, birth and death, temporality and permanence…
Performed at erf(81) kultural kollective (farm in Tamboerskloof) for Out The Box Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance September 2008.
Performed in 'real-time' with no designated beginning or ending.

OUT THE BOX FESTival of puppetry & visual performance

I worked on the Out The Box festival, in September this year, helping out Janni Young from UNIMA. I worked mostly as a mentor for theatre groups from townships who participated in the "Active Puppets Training and Development" programme, which facilitated and showcased their pieces in the festival. I assisted in the construction of their props, and mostly helped Zimasa's group: "Iselwa Lesizwe" from Khayelitsha on his piece: "Through the Eyes of the Sexworker."
Extract from "Active Puppets" programme:
" Puppetry is a powerful tool for social development and is underutilized in South Africa, partly because of lack of skills in this area. UNIMA SA's Active Puppets program encourages a vital artistic, social and economic area of development in South Africa. All Active Puppets trainings are free of charge and wherever possible participant expenses are covered.
The objectives of Active Puppets are:
To provide training in multimedia and puppetry skills to historically disadvantaged artists and youth.
To spread the use of visual performance as a tool for communication and social development.
To create employment in the creative arts.
To encourage cross-cultural interaction via the medium of visual performance."
These are images of Zimasa and his set design.

SWIM HOME

"swim home" acrylic on canvas. new owner: adam

plan for Afrika Burns 2008

"THE UNBROKEN HEART"
(daya & dust)

Tall figures
stretching to the sky
like trees
looming in a desert
landscape
casting shadows on the cracked earth
and you who pass between them.

They thirst for the sun
like a prayer.
They wait for the wind
like the dawn.

"The willow knows what the storm does not.
That the power to endure pain outlives the power to inflict it."

















AFRIKA BURNS WEBSITE

elephant puppets

These were made with Janni Younge from SOGO theatre for Solms Delta wine farm in Franschoek in a workshop with the farmworkers for the Franschoek Bastille Festival, which took place last Saturday 12 July.

WHOLE

artist sculpture and model:


"WHOLE" has been accepted into the sasol new signatures competition and will be exhibited in Pretoria at the Pretoria Art Museum from 20 Aug. - 21 Sept.
steel, plaster, cretestone, feathers
150 x 40 cm
“Whole” is a pubescent black girl, whose skin colour has been taken away.
She has a hole where her heart is - filled of feathers, like a nest you want to climb inside.
Puberty is a period of becoming.
South Africa is in a state of change.
Jesus had holes in his hands.
Baby feathers allude to the potential for flight.
Her big feet root her firmly on the ground.
Her eyes are open.

in process:



I sculpted her in my new wooden cottage home in welcome glen. It was such a joy. My first real scu;lpture in two years. She is my favourite at the moment. I finished it on wednesday 02 june. It took me approx. 3 weeks from welding the armature to completion.
there will be many more. i feel them ebbing from the unmade world. through me into this one.

oil painting: 'this place i call home'

"this place I call home"
oil on canvas
approx. 1m square.
made specifically for a member's exhibition at AVA: 'exploring south african landscapes, x marks the spot'. to my surprise i found out after painting it that the show was intended literally for images of landscapes and there was not much room for interpretation of the theme. it would definitely not have fitted in the exhibition. so now it will either be exhibited at cape africa platform in spin street along with work by other participants in the young creatives programme, or at erf 81 - the farm in tamboerskloof, as part of the Out The Box festival taking place in September.

mural

at the back of rafikis, bottom of kloofnek rd, finished just before i moved house.

prints for misfit dusseldorf

just arrived at misfit, dusseldorf, germany

open heart never stop

sold to 2 girls from portobello on long street, 07 july. they going to live in america.



'dark heart never fear' and 'open heart never stop'
canvas prints of photoshopped charcoal and pencil drawings + goldleaf, embroidery and paint.
1m x 30 cm each.
used to be up at arternative on kloof. going up at portabello on long str.

afrika burns - oude moulen 08 march

In a day and a half we built a sculpture to burn on saturday night at the 'decompression' gathering at oude moulen.
the sculpture:
(the inside form is the bust of a pregnant woman made out of feathers from a body cast.)


making it:

the burn (around midnight):

ARTISTS: buffi, patrick (garbage engineer), cindy (superwoman), me. and thanks also for help - roxy from raffiki's and I'm so sorry I forgot your friends name?

City Bowl Girl

mixed media series exhibited at cafe royale on long street from 22 feb - 22 march as part of yearly MOPP 'cafe circuit' exhibition.
to see these images close-up, visit www.daya-illustration.blogspot.com
MOPP opening night at Annexe gallery:

exhibition at royale:

drawings/digital

examples of the drawn and digital images i have been working on over the past year. since i graduated from sculpture i have worked a lot 2-dimensionally. i remembered how much i love drawing and started drawing my head off. then i saved up for a fancy computer. these images have been printed on canvas and worked into with goldleaf. last year they sold at the bin's R100 closing down exhibition http://www.circuslabs.co.za/; at a charity exhibition: 'show some love' at tokyo star in melville, jhb http://www.carfax.co.za/tokyoStar/tokyostar.html; 'night of 1000 drawings' http://www.1000drawings.co.za/ at the old biscuit mill http://www.theoldbiscuitmill.co.za/; and are presently selling at misfit on long street http://www.misfit.co.za/. i am experimenting with embroidery and paint into the printed image.

graduate exhibition: 'home' (sculptural installation)

graduate exhibition: "home" november 2006. michaelis school of fine art, uct. www.michaelis.uct.ac.za
the hanging sculptures are paper mache and resin from plaster body casts.
the heart was originally sculpted in clay and cast in resin.
the sperm were sculpted in wax and cast in F16.
the single gold sperm ('he-man') is bronze.
the uterus is velvet and satin fabric.
the kneeling and seated figures are modelled in cretestone over plaster and a steel armature.
'phoenix' has a bird skeleton imbedded in her back.
'pray' has a seal spine.
the wings of feet hang from a seabird's wing-bones.
the drops are resin containing moths and butterflies.
this body of work looks at the human body as home - where the physical and divine meet - subject to cycles of life and death, journey, process, transformation and mortality. inanimate and live bodies occupy the same space.

x-cape 2007

the exhibition "home" was installed in the long corridors that wrap around old military storage rooms on the farm in tamboerskloof - an old military base - as part of the Cape 07 biennale in march 2007. there was only one entrance and exit. on the ground before the entrance into the exhibition, i nailed hundreds of paper flowers, too close together to not step on them. people coming to view the exhibition had to step on the flowers. i wanted to film close to the ground all the giant feet crushing the beautiful, fragile origami, but couldn't get hold of a camera.
it is a long way around inside the corridor... when walking through, you don't realise it continues until you get to the end, to find it turns around the corner and carries on. the corridors have high ceilings but are very narrow. on the opening night there were lots of people. it got quite crowded in there and almost claustrophobic as you had to walk single file and couldn't always turn around. this added to the experience. the environment made it much more experiential than an exhibition space in which the art is viewed objectively from a safe distance. the candle-light made it feel like a medieval castle. and the half-lit figures seemed almost alive. in one moment a gust of wind blew the paper figures up making a girl shout in fright.
another french woman was almost in tears. I remember her saying of the sculpture at the end: "I can see her heart beating." that touched me very deeply.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/CitySkinImages/CAPE07XCape
http://nativesoul.blogspot.com/2007/03/home-daya-at-fak-plaas.html
(no. B30 in xcape programme) http://www.capeafrica.org/xcape_programme_b.html
http://www.artthrob.co.za/07apr/listings_cape.html

the exhibition took place alongside the erf (81) cultural collective http://www.trekker.co.za/erf81.htm headed by Andre (artist? - not sure what he wants to be called - he once described himself as a cunnilinguist), who lives on the farm - which has also become home to orphaned children and animals who he often takes under his wing; and performance artist peter van heerden http://www.trekker.co.za/ - recent award winner at spier contemporary.
on the opening night there was also a procession through the grounds of giant puppets carried by the children who live there. the puppets were a result of a week-long 'workshop', more like creative afternoons, in which i helped them build fantastical creatures out of cane and paper - [a technique i learnt at the yearly weeklong workshops for underpriviledged kids of the clanwilliam community, put on by magnet theatre, jazzart, and UCT http://www.news.uct.ac.za/mondaypaper/archives/?id=4733, http://www.cllp.uct.ac.za/events%20CLLP.htm, which i attended for 3 years during my studies].
unfortunately the lighting of the puppets from the inside didn't work too well and they paraded after sunset so they weren't very visible in the windswept night, but often the experience is in the process, and the kids were very proud of what they made. below are pictures of them making them. wanga made a crocodile. asavela made a butterfly. aviwe made a cockerel. theo helped out generally. we all made a giant creature that 4 kids fitted inside. there are also photos of after the fact, around a table of brandy and coke, with andre and leila anderson (who performed with andre and peter in an anti-abuse performance piece) in his gallery: 3 giant rooms of piles of the strangest collected things - a truly surreal archive to wander/wonder through.

performance

this performance piece originated in a workshop held by jay pather in august 2007, and was entered into spier contemporary. it was originally performed in a group with kemang wa lehulere - http://gugulective.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html, chuma sopotela, and mpho masilela - http://www.dancefilmsassn.org/Aboutnewinitiatives-creativestreets.html. kemang and chuma joined with mwenya kabwe and went on to win an award at the spier contemporary exhibition - http://africacentre.net/projects/spier-contemporary/.

in this piece i performed as though a live version of the inanimate life-size sculptures - interacting with them by playing with mirror imagery and the dynamic between movement and stillness. i moved between the two sculptures in a cyclical journey up and down stairs 'planting' paper flowers on the way up the stairs to create a pathway from the one to the other, and crushing them beneath my feet on the way down. the 'journey' began with me sitting back to back with the crosslegged sculpture and finished by kneeling face to face with the other. i then returned to the original position, pushing all the flowers down like a waterfall to begin the process again. the work explores dichotomies of ascent and descent, past and future, growth and stagnation, creation and destruction, reaping and sewing, movement and stillness, birth and death, temporality and permanence…
it was my first performance art experience and i was bladdy nervous.

daddylonglegs

when i got back from england in 2002 after a pretty miserable time there, i was so happy to be back home in south africa and cape town - one of the most beautiful cities in the world. i was overwhelmed by its beauty and began a photographic ode to capture its magnificent skies. with money i'd saved in the uk i bought a nissan bakkie and drove almost every evening one summer to the sea to watch the sunset and recorded the silent moments of many days' endings. in 2005 i was waitressing in between my art degree and overheard a conversation about the beginning of the new daddylonglegs boutique art hotel - in which every room is different, designed by a different artist. i'd always wanted to cover walls from floor to ceiling with my myriad sunsets, and submitted a proposal. i wanted to create a still, calm feeling in the room like when watching a sunset, and tried to fit that sense of a large expanse into the room's confined space, hence the room's name: "open". the images themselves - each one different - are of vast open sky and seascapes in limitless colour, but they are positioned within rigid lines of a grid. to me they seem like windows through order into openness. the bed is on a circular base - a symbol for infinity - within the room's rectangular finite-ness. it is also very low to the ground creating a large space between the bed and ceiling, which is filled up by the multitudes of sunset pictures that echo further into the mirrors on the ceiling, as though they go on forever. the room is, in a way, divided in half - design-wise: the bright sunset wallpaper eases into a white minimalism on the opposite side of the room. otherwise, i think the sunsets would be too overwhelming. the white simplicity is soothing after the bright colours. the squares on the ceiling come down the wall in the form of cubic shelves, like a grid pattern breaking up. the ideas of a broken grid, and echo, are continued in the bathroom where some of the tiles are replaced with scattered mirrors. http://www.daddylonglegs.co.za/HTML/HotelGallery/Gal6.html

here are pictures of the process and the completed room. the gorgeous girl with the umbrella is kate who lived with me at the time; and buffi braveart - a magic man who rescued and swept me away. and my brother nathan. thanks also: scott and kirsty - who managed the project and were very helpful!
the room landed up on the front cover of visi magazine - issue 24 http://www.visi.co.za/backissues/backissues.asp; and was written about in the first issue of one small seed - oct-dec 2005 http://www.onesmallseed.com/; the cape argus - 12 oct 2005; and the sunday independant - 8 jan 2006. apparently it is the most popular room.

afrika burns 2007

afrika burns was truly one of the most memorable experiences of my life - out in the karoo desert for 8 days.
nov 2007 was the first burning man festival in africa. http://www.burningman.com/
i built the burning man's heart. i welded the steel frame at jonah's workshop in kommetjie. the frame was covered with woven pine branches. when it burnt, the wood burnt off and the steel frame was left behind. people wrote little notes and wishes they wanted to send off into the sky and put them inside the heart before it burnt. the heart was attached to the 9m high effigy, which burnt on the last night. the heart burnt first and some pyrotechnics were arranged so that red sparks shot out of the heart as it burnt. in one breathtaking moment, its connection to the burning man broke and it fell to the ground dropping metres to the pyres' feet... where the steel frame remained while the rest burnt to the ground.

on site in the desert, i found a huge pile of strips of thin plywood left over from another sculpture. i got the idea to make a drawing out of these long lines on the ground. i drew a mermaid phoenix - about 8m long.
the strips were nailed together to keep them in place, and the 'drawing' slightly raised off the ground on the top end. it was the only sculpture there that was flat on the ground and therefore not visible from a distance. people only found it who stumbled upon it, which made it a slight secret.
i wrapped red wool around the centre of her fin, and mosaic-ed a heart underneath her fish's tail from flat, yellow stones i found in the desert. (the rocks out there are something else.)
on the end of the mer-phoenix's wing i wrote a story:
"Once upon a far away time in a open-nest silent big sky place there was a mermaid phoenix with a underwater tail and a single wing which worked when she was brave. She lay on the ground with 360degree cloud bowl in her eyes filling her up from the inside. And the racing thoughts began to subside into the ground beneath her back they sank. The earth was hot. Desert-ed.
She waited.
To burn.
A mer-phoenix of the earth.
She waited to burn.
A soul to merge.
Into the big sky above."

it was the last artwork to burn. it was lit after the burning man. i handed out paper flowers which people burnt. people jumped over the flames and roasted marshmallows in the fire. the wind became so strong that it sent the coals into the night like a burning river. it was a warning of the coming sandstorm. it arrived immediately afterwards and we walked back in the middle of the storm, pushed by sand. the mosaic heart remained after, like the steel one of the man.
next year the festival will be 7 days long. come. http://www.afrikaburns.com/index.html

commissions

jan 2007

this pregnant torso was made from a body cast of the mother-to-be who commissioned me. it is made out of paper mache, resin and the inside is gold-leafed. it is quite light and therefore hangs on a wall easily and looks pretty hung over a light. it is a nice way to remember the pregnant form after giving birth.

isn't it hysterical? flying penises. to hang on a wall - instead of flying ducks - flying dicks! they were commissioned by a designer for a gay mansion, sculpted in clay, to be cast in clear resin... my chance to get sculpturally acquainted with male anatomy (i won't say who modelled). I also sculpted for him a penis-shaped cocktail shaker! in three parts; and a very perky boys bum! which was going to be made into a knife sharpener! goodness gracious. i stop producing for him when talk of mass-producing them began, rather than them being once-off items as i originally thought.

feb 2007

a large mask sculpted for collin at alien safari - outdoor trance parties http://aliensafari.net/news.shtml - out of wire and paper mache. it's pretty big - about 4m wide.

dec 2007

a 4m high tower that people can sit inside for alien safari party coming up. sneak preview. made out of cane and paper. i employed the boys on the farm to help me paper it.

2005