Keiskamma Art Project

Notes

This work is a collaborative piece conceived by Carol Hofmeyr and implemented by artists Nomuyiselo Malumbezo and Ndikela Mapuma. It was embroidered by Nebula Ngxobongwana and Nomabhelu Nyongo.

As with many of the Keiskamma Art Project pieces, A New Earth, is inspired by a famous European art work, in this case Pieter Breugel the Elder's work Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, which was influenced by events of the time - turmoil and exploration. It drew particularly on Revelation Ch. 12 Vs. 9.

"Then a terrible war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the great dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back. But the dragon did not have the power to win and they could not regain their place in heaven. So the great dragon was thrown down once and for all. He was the serpent, the ancient snake called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole earth. He was cast down into the earth and his angels along with him"

Although it has a spiritual theme, Bruegel’s love of and fascination with the physical and natural world is very obvious. This perhaps is evidence of the conflict raging in Europe between the new protestants and the Catholic reaction.

At the time he painted, European explorers were returning from Africa and the America's with strange objects from the natural world that had never been seen in Europe before and that fascinated educated people. Curiosity cabinets, which held the objects were common possessions of the rich. Bruegel used and observed very meticulously, the strange objects, and make them stranger, using them to depict the transforming rebel angels expelled to hell.

Since the time of Bruegel we have seen an exponential increase in extinctions of many species, global warming and also come to see the natural world as fragile, vulnerable and endangered and in fact disappearing, rather than as something evil and threatening.

We try in this work to talk of resurrection and hope for all we seem to be losing.

Revelation 21:

Behold I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth
Now God himself will have his home with them
God-with-them will be their God
He will wipe away every tear and eliminate death entirely