Prayer for Mayim
Store Review (0)PRESENTED BY : Bontle Juku
Frame | None |
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Medium | Acrylic paint on canvas |
Location | Cape Town, South Africa |
Height | 42.00 cm |
Width | 29.70 cm |
Artist | Bontle Juku |
Year | 2025 |
This painting delves into the complex relationship between humanity and the natural world, focusing on water’s cyclical nature and its own purification process. Water, often seen as a source of life, is portrayed here as going through a process of healing and renewal in response to human attempts to control, exploit, and alter it. The painting abstracts this relationship through geometric shapes and color, illustrating both the external bodies of water and the internal connection between the water that the human body is composed of.
The painting interprets water-based natural disasters - such as hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis - as a form of nature’s purification process. These disasters symbolize water’s natural attempt to cleanse itself of the chemicals and pollutants that humanity constantly introduces into it. The piece invites the viewer to reflect on the unintended consequence that, as humanity attempts to control nature, it often becomes a casualty of nature's own restorative actions to return to its original form.
Through abstraction, the work emphasizes the hidden, often unseen aspects of this process—the forms, shapes, and colors that embody the force of nature at work. In doing so, the painting urges us to acknowledge the interconnectedness of human and environmental health: when we harm nature, we inevitably harm ourselves. That water/nature has its own mechanisms of healing, ultimately seeking to restore balance and peace as a response to human interference.
This exploration of water's purification process presents a commentary on the consequences of environmental damage and the resilience of nature’s healing forces, calling for a reevaluation of our relationship with nature, an urge to see elements of nature as living bodies, just as we are.
