Elder Garth Erasmus
Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician. His work focuses on South African socio-cultural politics as it relates to Khoisan (South Africa's First Nation people) identity. Garth work uses archival research to approach his Khoisan lineage, and drawing on figures from Khoisan cosmology.
Erasmus has employed Afrikaans text to comment on the brutal Khoisan history and its impact on present descendants, opening a window onto the way this history has been repressed.
Garth's work is represented in several art collections, including the National Museum of African Art and the Smithsonian Institution. Among other formats Garth is known for his Resistance Art protesting the apartheid regime in South Africa. Beginning as graffiti protest art his State of Emergency series depicts images of entrapment. Writing in a review of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Arts 2002 exhibition "Encounters with the Contemporary," critic Mark D'Amato called Erasmus' painting The Muse 3 (1995) "a highlight.
" Erasmus' work uses his archival research to approach his Khoisan lineage, and drawing on figures from Khoisan cosmology. Erasmus has "employed Afrikaans text to comment on the brutal Khoisan history and its impact on present descendants, opening a window onto the way this history has been repressed."
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