ARTAFRICAThis is nowhere more evident than in The World’s Last Mysteries, a collage in which the focal point is the
gilt-inscribed cover of a book entitled The Amazing World of Nature. Its deep blue cover is laid over an
antique hemispheric map of the world, while small tamata – Greek votives in the shapes of body parts
- are arranged in a tight horizontal row at its bottom edge. To the right of the book cover, the artist
has hand-drawn a figural diagram that maps the movement of kundalini energy through the body; her
pen snakes up and down the figure’s spine, its two helical lines crossing at his naval, heart, throat and
third eye. These spiralling movements also inscribe and annotate the map below, as figure and ground - body and landscape – are literally merged. Behind the figure’s left shoulder, Faith47 presents a hand-
written passage from Alan Paton’s 1948 novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, a seminal work of literature
that interweaves the stories of a Zulu Reverend and a white landowner. Their paths converge at the
nexus of tragedy and poignant revelation (despite the efforts of the then-nascent apartheid system to
draw strict boundaries between them). The story unfolds, importantly, in the protagonists’ journeys
between city and countryside. All across The World’s Last Mysteries, as in the entire exhibition, such
borders between humanity and the earth, order and chaos, the holy and the mundane and other such
binaries continually dissolve and merge.
Allison K. Young is an art historian and critic based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently
a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a
lecturer in Art History at Parsons, The New School for Design.
‘Aqua Regalia – Chapter II’ ran from the 19th November through to the 20th December 2015 at the Jonathan
LeVine Gallery in West Street, New York.
AQUA REGALIA – CHAPTER II / ALLISON K. YOUNG 4/4 ARTAFRICA
REVIEWSInstallation view of ‘Aqua Regalia – Chapter II’, at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York.