Notes

A big change in Noria Mabasa’s work came with a change in medium, when she started to carve wood. She provides two not necessarily contradictory reasons for this move. The first is found in her dreams and the second focuses on the practical considerations for this move. She has said that she prefers working in wood because it does not break so easily. But wood offered other opportunities: firstly, to earn more money and secondly to develop artistically. From the outset the iconography of the wood pieces differed from the works in clay. They were large, complex, and narrative. Their sources were multiple, lying in the news media, mythology, history, and the Bible [the present lot is called, Moses], and interestingly, not in dreams.

- Rayda Becker