About Marais

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So far Marais has created 15 blog entries.

Friendship with a dead sculptor…(i)

 

The Royal Poincianas are in full, blazing crimson bloom and, as I peer over my chipped porcelain teacup inhaling its dark aroma, the conversation starts.

 

It is a monologue that drifts over the static channels of more than a century but when he speaks his beard moves like a stiff, red, thatch roof. Barely two inches taller than me, we look at each other through a fog–not because of the curtain of time–but because of our weak eyes. Our sight is due to the unavoidable curse of a sculptor that works many hours transfixed and bent over his material in low light.

 

His hands–once called une main d’une prodigieuse vitesse–are moving restlessly when he speaks about how the power of observation should always be practiced…look at an object and fix that image in your mind and try to retain its memory as long as possible before you sketch it. When you are carving your object, never see the form in length but that of its width; a surface is always the extremity of the volume. He will lean forward in his chair to make very clear his point that it is all about the projection of the interior volumes. In each swelling of the torso or the limbs a suggestion of outward thrust is made by a muscle or a bone that is buried deep under the skin. Oh, and for god sakes do not brood over your failures too long for there is not much time; an intense nervous excitement should always drive you back into the studio and into your work but there is no need to hurry.

 

Wait a minute–what do you mean? I have to work with nervous excitement and fast hands; or there’s no hurry, so take it easy? Which one is it?

 

His fingers are now rolling a clay coil absentmindedly and he slowly utters that, a sculptor should be wild about working, getting up early, sketching non-stop, studying the masters, never be distracted for so much as a minute! But you always have time to make a beginning once you are sure of your subject; a sculptor can establish his or her reputation with a single piece of sculpture.

 

A silence falls between us that becomes filled with the songs of the cicadas, both lost in thought. I asked him if he will come back tomorrow?

 

 



*Grunfeld V. Frederic, “Rodin. A Biography” Henry Holt. 1987.
*Rodin, A “Rodin on Art and Artists” Dover Publications. 1983.
By |2017-07-12T13:05:40-04:00May 27th, 2011|

The Birthright

His words always fit my heart and soul like a glove, his books “an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside“.

“…our presence there was legal but illegitimate. We had an abstract right to be there, a birthright, but the basis of that right was fraudulent. Our presence was grounded in a crime, namely colonial conquest, perpetuated by apartheid. Whatever the opposite is of native or rooted, that was what we felt ourselves to be. We thought of ourselves as sojourners, temporary residents, and to that extent without a home, without a homeland.” ~J.M Coetzee

Summertime,  2009,  Penguin books, 209-210

By |2017-07-12T13:05:40-04:00May 6th, 2011|

Sojourn

the pink caravan trails on my ceiling.
the otter burrows deep down into my jaw.
with rattles they come dancing with screaming cats on leashes.
the little angel climbs up my wall, he would have been sweet if it wasn’t  for his crab claws.
somewhere a ball is bouncing non-stop.
i am only a speck of dust, yet this dust comes from the stars.
the chandelier drips like a stalactite from the ceiling. This house is no longer my home.
i cannot focus, the pots and pans keep giggling in a metal grinding rhetoric.
maybe the pot is fucking the pan. Shut up already!
my hallway is a slippery slope in which you gently slide into an abyss of pillows and feathers.
swallowed by this pillow I drowned in feathers and mites. Sinking.
the bugs are crying, crying, they try to tell me something but their throats are too small.
the mortar in between the bricks start to grow into tumors and callus.
the crying bugs are now in the far distance like a song by an Arab in the desert begging for redemption from God.
in this desert there is no forgiveness only a mirage of playing children in pink dresses.
the camel came scurrying by, his humps the perfect chopstick holder.
it is so uncomfortable, it does not fit the air and space does not belong. Like a violin dueling with a bag of potato chips.
a Gabbeh rug is slowly crawling through the forest.
my arms are made of lead, two metal snakes just dangling.
i ask the rug “Where are you going’ He says “Don’t you know that there is a war?”
that is when I started to run, the leaves got thicker and deeper until I had to swim my way out through autumn.
i was wearing a tight black leather cat-suit until I realize it is made out of licorice. I have already eaten the arms.
can to much licorice kill you? I have started to lick my eyes.
the secedes whine like sewing machines in the trees, I think they are making ‘coullottes
i met a brown recluse the other day, I do not think he was particularly happy with me.
he told me if it was not for the high level of plastic in my blood he would have bitten me.
i ask the rug “How do you survive out here”
he says ”Mushrooms”
two shadows live in my suitcase, they do not like to travel by air.
the pink caravan trails on my ceiling.

~June 2008

By |2017-05-02T13:04:08-04:00March 10th, 2011|

A Blot of Ocean.

The Ocean as Schizophrenia  ….. “…henceforth it is no longer a question of crossing a continent or an ocean from one city to the next. The fleet in being creates  …………….

Ocean Blot #1 by Anja Marais

Ocean Blot #1. Ink and manipulated photograph. 16in x 20in. © Anja Marais

…….the notion of displacement without destination in space and time . . . The strategic submarine has no need to go anywhere in particular; it is content, while controlling the sea, to remain invisible  ……The realization of the absolute, uninterrupted, circular voyage, since it involves neither departure or arrival . .  .

Ocean blot #3 by Anja Marais

Ocean blot #3. Ink and manipulated photograph. 16in x 20in.© Anja Marais

Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics, 1986 (New York:Semiotext)pp38, 40-41, 134-135.

By |2017-05-02T13:04:08-04:00February 26th, 2011|
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