Rain Horse

Provenance

Goodman Gallery, 2010.

Private Collection.

Notes

Accompanied by the book Karen E Milbourne (2013) Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, New York: The Monacelli Press.

The present lot features a horse with outstretched legs set above a landscape. This unique work is composed of ash and charcoal dust, specifically created from the burnt remains of books dedicated to apartheid-era land policies.

"There is an impossible disconnect between the land and the rain beast in Diane Victor's Rain Horse. Her mythical horse offers neither escape nor relief. No sun could shine from behind the horse to cast this shadow, for it has been inverted and moves away from the viewer. Within this impossible space, Victor has drawn the crumbled remains of the city of Dresden after the Allied forces' fire bombings, the ruins of South African townships, and the charred remnants of a scorched veld. Here, Victor has drawn the ashes of a landscape with the ashes of the words used to quantify, describe, and own this landscape."¹

^1. Karen E Milbourne (2013) Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, New York: The Monacelli Press, page 48.

Exhibited

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D C, Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, 22 April 2013 to 5 January 2014, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue in colour on page 49.