Creative Week Cape Town

South African visual artist NYANISO LINDI spent three months in Paris, from January to March 2010, as part of the 2009 ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award. The work created by the artist during his artistic residency in Paris will be showcased this year within the French cultural network of Alliances Françaises and French Cultural Centres in Southern Africa, as part of a tour.

“Metamorphosis is a biological process through which an animal physically develops after birth or after hatching, which involves a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s body structure, through cell growth and differentiation. Some insects and amphibians undergo metamorphosis, which is usually accompanied by a change of habitat or behaviour. Metamorphosis involves the evolutionary process of shedding one’s old skin for a new one. I see my artwork as a visual text that creates language. Language is a semiotic construct which is mutable, where there is no resemblance between the subject and the name. The show investigates notions of autonomy between written text and visual text, or between text and context.” explains Nyaniso Lindi