Sculpture
November 2006
Cape Town, South Africa

Expressive Identity:
A Conversation with WILLIE BESTER
by Claire Wolf Krantz

Willie Bester is known for works relating to South African history, in particular to apartheid and the resistance to it. Since the end of apartheid in 1990, he has also incorporated personal themes into his work while still examining social and political issues. His newer sculptures and assemblages join found objects to form the shape of a person, animal, or thing or incorporate them into something else like a chair, door, or passageway. His wit can be seen in his house, where he has constructed sometimes huge whimsical sculptures, mosaics, and wildly creative electronic, mechanical, and structural elements.

Claire Wolf Krantz: How did you develop as on artist, and how did being colored (of mixed race) influence your development?

Willie Bester: When I was growing up, everybody was doing drawings, I don't think it was seen as art. We were living in Montagu, a township about 200 kilometers outside Cape Town.
Everything was cut into little blocks with the schools and the communities: the white community was on the other side, and blacks were separated from colored people. My father was black, and my mother was colored. My father had to carry a zone pass, a card with your face and your race. The blacks' lives were completely controlled by the zone pass. My father couldn't buy a house. He couldn't move where he wanted. There was a time when he couldn't live with my mother. He had to be careful out in the street. A neighbor could phone the police, and they could come and smash the door to get this black person. His struggles were very important for my development. He taught me a lot about injustices and about how cruel ordinary people can become.

CWK: Did Asians and coloreds also have to carry identification?

WB: Identification, not zone passes. Mine said "Other." The system put people of mixed race into one box and called them colored. If you were not from a particular race, you were classified as other, which meant you were a non-person.

CWK: How did you develop as an artist?

WB: We had dusty streets, and we used to scrape patterns into the ground. It was part of growing up. And then I started to get more involved with drawing and was encouraged by teachers from the primary school. But apartheid denied me access to an art school.
So I developed on my own and started to have exhibitions in commercial galleries. These exhibitions were normally praised on the strength of some kind of European influence in your work. Up until 1985, I was just painting the streets- motorcars, old houses, scenery without people.

CWK: You were pointing white neighborhoods?

WB: Yes, quiet street scenes in the suburbs. By 1985 it became clear that I had to assess what I wanted to do with art. I backed away from being a tourist artist and moved to a situation in which I could express my inner feelings and the troubles that I saw in the community. I started to question apartheid and became involved in the struggle against it.

CWK: How?

WB: The Community Arts Project (CAP) was organized by Cecil Skotnes on non-racial principles. They were located in the white area, in Mowbray. There were people of all different colors in the class. And it was also very relaxed because we were looking at
issues from a point of view of a collective against apartheid. It was the first time I saw that you can share the things that are happening around you. It was very exciting. But it was also very scary because if I joined them I would be in trouble with the sys-
tem. It was more political site than art school.

CWK: What connection did CAP have to the resistance as a
whole?

WB: Its main idea was to form structures outside the country by embarrassing the apartheid government. We used art as a tool of resistance. We saw ourselves as cultural workers rather than artists. We were also under an umbrella organization called the Congress of South African Cultural Workers, which included artists in many disciplines- painting, sculpture, poetry, theater, and film-making. These organizations started to gain muscles, and I got very excited.

CWK: So you started making work about how you felt and what you were thinking. Did you show this work?

WB: After '85 I started depicting more political, violent scenes, and the mentality of the police toward the people. I also moved slowly into collages. There were exhibitions outside the country to tell the world about our problems. CAP made connections in France, Sweden, all over Europe.

CWK: How did you become a famous artist?

WB: There was a big competition, the Cape Town Triennial. Only white people participated. I became one of the winners of merit prizes. Everyone serious knew about that competition. So then anybody would give me an exhibition. That's where it started.

CWK: When I saw your sculptures I didn't know you were a painter.

WB: I grew up being more of a sculptor than painter because we used to make wire cars, airplanes, and go-carts. It was very sculptural. But then I started to paint because it was very difficult to keep sculptures. Even today I'm always aware of floor space.

CWK: All of the pieces outside your house are things you made for the site, so your house is really a sculpture, an installation. Do you make installations to exhibit?

WB: Sometimes I do installations: I bring a lot of sculptures and place them into an installation.

CWK: Do you still feel a sense of separation from the whites of Cope Town?

WB: Yes, but more because of class. It was at CAP that I first saw whites on another level. There were whites who were prepared to listen and whites who were prepared to share their skills. Sometimes whites who grew up with more privileges under the same system don't like black people to express themselves. It's not that I want to make them feel guilty. I just think maybe they think that apartheid is over and you have to forget about the
past. In the meantime, we are trying to come to grips with our past.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.