Living in a Box: A Retrospective
A solo exhibition by Warren Maroon
16.07.2020 - 27.08.2020
“I was eleven years old when I witnessed, what was then the first of many murders; for as long as I live on the Cape Flats, this scene has been a repeated experience. It’s difficult – witnessing kids kill each other. It’s even harder to pretend that it didn't happen and to, out of fear, continue playing soccer with them.” – Warren Maroon
Warren Maroon’s first solo show, Living in a Box: a Retrospective, is a body of sculptural works that communicate his, and many others', lived experience of growing up on the Cape Flats. Made up of ordinary, seemingly insignificant objects and household items, and titled strategically, each work contributes to the recreation of an experience that is both individual and shared by a past and present community. Each artwork draws on specific events that occurred throughout his life; some of which he experienced as a bypassing witness, some of which he experienced as a member of a community racked with the acidic and brutal legacy of apartheid. While a new dawn may have brushed the country, the deep crevices of social and economic inequity have remained, many years later – each work seeks to either draw attention to this or to reframe and reconstitute the meaning of living in and experiencing the Cape Flats.
The sprawling meaning and loaded denotations of each object, as a sign, hold both mundane and murderous significance – objects that live in the duality of use as both a wielding weapon and a poor-child’s toy. Knives, a zip gun, brick, beer bottles, glass and rope are but some of the repurposed objects Warren has used for his sculptures, each holding this multiplicity of meaning, function, and memory in the mind of a present, or past Cape Flats inhabitant.
There are no grand statements, no positive falsities postulated, nor a desire to conceptually reframe lived experiences. Rather, there is a need to contribute to a growing body of literary, visual, and sociological imagery and text of this community, by its members, in fierce and personal depictions. In doing so, the artist works for the community. Not to the benefit of the outsiders, wishing to unlearn or understand, but for the insiders – the kids, both grown or passed, both free or incarcerated, whose stories and lives deserve to be seen authentically.
