Milk for Dust (3) 2014
Trading skills, goods, services, dreams and personalities in exchange for produce or sustenance, our relationship to friends, animals, people, and the environment is often dependent on the nature of the exchange.
The transaction defines our relationships and we become detached from the natural resources and the persons used for the production.
We grow and decline from the produce that we imbibe, and ultimately become what is consumed.
The value of plants, animals, earthly substances, people, bodies, dreams and personalities, remains in the sum of their influence on our bodies or minds, and in the parts discarded in landfills on the edges of towns and villages.
A fine line exists between desire and disgust for a product purchased and the same item when discarded.
However, even with a planet used as merely a resource, earthly balance is reflected in the fertility of waste in every form. What is abandoned to some will always be sustaining to another.
Lines of Power 2014
The people outside of South Africa’s mainstream economy are sometimes outcaste, ostracised, unsightly and often harassed and criticised, but yet are necessary to complete all parts of our value chain in a developing democracy.
This work captures the home of informal immigrant construction workers living among the natural spaces of the city, helping to build the new skyscrapers by weekday, and taking care of domestic chores on weekends.
The living spaces of South Africa’s informal recyclers, plastic and metal collectors, informal immigrant workers and landfill collectors become informal workspaces hidden amongst Johannesburg’s urban forest which support the value chain of the economic metropolis.
Although a key part of the development of the urban metropolitan landscape, they hold no permanent residence and are often threatened by locals, the police and formal residents mistaking them for criminals.
Appearing almost hidden from direct sight, they persist with hope and resilience.
Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.
Tanisha Bhana
South Africa
Tanisha Bhana is an interdisciplinary artist and financial and global markets attorney, born in 1976 in Durban, South Africa and currently works in Johannesburg while establishing a forest haven and retreat in the Magaliesburg region, close to the Cradle of Humankind heritage area, South Africa.
She is fascinated by the ephemeral nature of life, the often overlooked or unseen, exploring the transient nature and interconnectedness of all things, organic or inanimate.
She has held solo exhibitions in South Africa and Germany and participated in curated exhibitions in South Africa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Namibia, China and Romania.
Through her use of photographic montage, which consists of matter she observes and collects, such as discarded objects, perishable or inert waste material, organic refuse, mulch, concrete, resin, natural pigments, synthetic products, blood, plastic, decomposing matter and light, she composes a visual narrative with layers of charged images.