Notes

Deborah Bell is recognised for her skills across a number of mediums including painting, printmaking and sculpture. The iconography in her work draws deeply on historical and mythological sources and includes images of power and spirituality across various cultures and philosophies. In the present Lot, Bell presents the idea of a Shaman, a messenger or intermediary who is able to access the spiritual world.

The Shaman figure stands strong, wrapped in a tiger skin still bearing the head, with two snakes curled around his waist. He holds the head of one snake up as he steps forward. Snakes and tigers are potent symbols and serve as poetic metaphors bridging the ‘real’ and the ‘supernatural’. ‘I’ve always been aware that when you take two unlike things and put them together, it’s the gap between them that creates the poetic potential’.¹

1. Deborah Bell (2011) Deborah Bell Presence (exhibition catalogue), Johannesburg: Everard Read, page 18.