A serious art

With two weeks to go before the 2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair we were asked to help promote the work of internationally acclaimed artist Barry Salzman.

Salzman’s work, a collection of landscapes entitled How We See The World, include extremely beautiful photos that question and honour the soul of a place, specifically those of global genocide sites.

His images dig deep below the surface. Aesthetically beautiful (Salzman shoots with a long-open aperture) they probe questions of belonging, memory and accountability. “I use the landscape metaphorically to draw connections between each of these disparate and dark moments in modern history,” he explains. “ [I suggest] that we, as members of an amorphous humanity, form the true connective tissue between them.”

Alongside this series, his gallery, Deepest Darkest Art showcased the full collection of his posthumous portraits of victims from the Rwandan genocide. The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim is a stark portrayal of the items of clothing 100 victims (men, women and children) wore on the last day of their lives.

“My hope is that each of these posthumous portraits forces us to imagine, and therefore commemorate, the lives of those who were killed during the genocide,” he says. “We can never comprehend one million dead people. We can, however, imagine the life story of this little boy carrying his doggy backpack, and each of the other people represented in this series. We can know them. Up until the day they were murdered, each lived at the center of their own story.”

The exhibition needed more than just a sweeping review. It’s evident Barry is a riveting, erudite art maker, his work is incredibly considered and as much as we love a 200 word overview, we were determined to not only ensure he got deeper coverage, but there was a real uncovering of the story behind the series and an valuable reflection of the evocative nature of the work.