Willie Bester's Shitezenship

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Considering and evaluating ideologies of the works of Nikos Gyftakis, Vincent van Gogh and Willie Bester on the final piece, “Shitezenship” Art pieces often acquire influence from either various artists, or merely one. In the case presented above, it can, however, be stated that various artists sagacious influence on the pieces; highly contributed to the overall outcome of the pieces. The choice of these artists rely highly on their stylistic choices, as well as their ideologies and inspiration behind their pieces. The artists who inspired the piece “Shitezenship” to a considerable degree, are Nikos Gyftakis, Van Gogh and Willie Bester. These artists’ influences can be explored in the following ways: To start with, are the creations of Nikos …show more content…

He uses the leftovers of a society which he outlines in order to retrace the political history of South Africa. Like an archaeologist, Bester reconstructs the fabric of this history to uncover the hidden faces of the South African townships. His works are vivid collages, juxtapositions of odds and ends, of rubbish found in the townships: shoes, bones, tin cans, newspaper clippings, pages of books, scrap metal, and many other ‘leftovers’. Small metal tiles and objects are fused into a remodelled and reshaped “skin.” Utilitarian objects are re-contextualised into relief works or monumental freestanding figures with forceful messages, for example, the Security Guard so familiar to anyone accustomed to the South African urban life. While the figure’s uneasy stance, sideways glance and partially exposed skeletal frame of cogs and bolts convey an underlying tension. This can be indicative of profound and complex paradoxes in a capitalist …show more content…

The flowers, in this case, has a symbolic representation of the blood and hard work the citizens of the country put into the progression (red in colour and agricultural connotation). The people are too busy staring at their tremendous work and effort, that they often miss the real motifs and corruption of the ruling government. The reason why these flowers are roses in particular and not red poppies as in Van Gogh painting, is because of the fact that every rose have a thorn, and thorns can make you bleed, or thorns can mean the corrupted that want to be seen as

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