Black tears and the sea

Abstract

In the work “Black tears and the sea” (2019), a photograph of an unusually quiet sea on a hazy, grey day, was digitally overlaid with glass drops. The title recalls the idea of dark tears, a murky bodily fluid, as if quoting a line from a text of the theory of the abject. In the context of the landscape the drops references rain, possibly running down a window pane, and evoking a sense of cold air. Motion seems frozen and like a frame from a film, it captures seconds in silence - a world coming to a total stand-still at the moment when an affecting event takes place. The aesthetic of the work has also been described as ‘sublime surrealism’ by curator Elfriede Dreyer extending the sense of dream state, the unreal and the liminal. The digital artwork was included in the group exhibition Apart/ A Part, curated by Laurette de Jager in 2020. It was also exhibited in the exhibition Gothic Romantic (2021) curated by edg2020 gallery, acquiring new layers of meaning of enchanted darkness due to the relationship with other artists’ work, such as that of Jaco van Schalkwyk, in the installation of the exhibition.