Notes

Brewer has always been fascinated by the bits and pieces that wash up along the shore – bits of coral, driftwood and shells. Each exquisite little fragment is unique and complex. Discarded in what is, essentially, the ocean’s waste disposal system.

Inspired by the complexity of nature and the underlying core of DNA found in a word-based universe, the artist used text as a metaphor for this ‘word code’ underlying all natural organisms. She started to create a series of digital text works inspired by the debris along the tideline at Tugela Mouth on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal. The images initially contained 11 of South Africa’s official languages, plus some Khoisan. Recently, Brewer started to include languages from across the world, and especially loves to include obscure languages from people groups who are not generally known.

For Brewer, the bits of debris have come to represent all the people who are undervalued and discarded by society: Every baby thrown away on a rubbish dump, every penniless rural granny caring for AIDS orphans, all the people trapped in slavery and human trafficking, every one of Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’ manipulated by politicians. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr: "I refuse to believe that man is mere flotsam and jetsam on the river of life."