Who is Donovan Ward?
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| LABELLED: Like Basil D’Oliveira, artist Donovan Ward grew up with apartheid’s insane obsession with race classification |
| PICTURE COURTESY OF DONOVAN WARD |
SOUTH African artist Donovan Ward was born in 1962 and lives and works in Cape Town. His artist’s statement outlines his interest in the "diversity of African experience".
This arises from his own life both during and post-apartheid. As he says, "My own memories and experiences as a South African national labelled by the apartheid state as ’coloured’, ’non-white’, ’kleurling’ and, conversely, within my own community as ’whitey’ or ’Blanco’, informs my exploration outside of the confines of these narrow labels which all just referred to skin colour alone."
Ward’s intention is "to explore local shifting, contradictory and multiple identities which are not bounded, but identities which also influence each other". Through his work, he aims to show "that issues of race are about both similarities and differences". |
