Notes

Vusi Khumalo is a visual historian - an artist who depicts the lives of communities still deprived of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow nation. He provides an unflinching document of urban dispossession through collages constructed from the flotsam of everyday life -discarded tins, rusted metal, fragments of clothing and wood. From these corroded materials he evokes sprawling vistas of shanties stretching across the landscape like misshapen patchwork quilts.

“Baipei is a Pedi word meaning ‘those who put themselves without authority’; the media refers to this as illegal land occupation. This work is symbolic of many informal settlements. The people who live in these settlements are forced to live there not by their own choice but circumstance. A quote from my poem ‘We are shacks- Singamatyotyombe and we are here to stay for poverty is our permission for existence’. Under those challenging situations you find people going on with their daily lives enjoying one thing only, being alive.”