Karin Saks
Media - Mixed Media
Email - [email protected]
Website - www.myspace.com/wildlife_africa
BAFA University Of Cape Town - Naturalist and Fine Artist
"Impossible to word what it means to exist as an artist in South Africa today. The minute minority who are able to afford to buy paintings may well not be the audience the artist wants to reach as a priority. I grew up within that minority - priveleged, and to be art literate or- seriously educated even - in the context of that world, was a privelege too. It is one I came to reject, to feel as self-indulgent in post apart-hate S.A. But underlying all we witnessed about human oppression was the parallel of the lives of other species. This haunted me equally - alongside the human condition, mainly because it was lost and hidden due to our self created arrogance.
We are separated from the natural world and therefore our understanding is severely limited. There can be no competition between humans and other animals, they are symbiotic, inextricably linked. Back then the parallels between racism, sexism and speciesism were the source of all I painted. Today, that has evolved into an internalised knowing of our interconnectedness with all life on earth. Thanks to those beings who have become one with my soul. And so, expression is littered with every step from birth. Sometimes there's an intuitive voice that drives me to visually express my existence but it is a side effect of life, of the words of the wild I share my territory with, of the city that stays far away, of the stark, painful aftermath of our political past, not merely those human, but those non-human (eg. primates that underwent blow-torch experiments or poisoning in the name of war) who have no fight in a country that has very recently just slowly moved towards some form of human rights progression.
Lying deep beneath our verbal activity is an unconscious place which if tapped into, makes cross-species communication more accessible for other species do not rely on our particular brand of language..they each have their own. And it is this place - where we access the language of other species - that I visit when I create, or should I say this is always my goal. "
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