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Cyprian Shilakoe (1946-1972)
Shilakoe, Cyprian Mpho (SA 1946 - 1972)
Follow the footsteps you will find her sleeping
Etching, signed, 1970, edition 22/25
29 X 40,5cm
Cyprian Shilakoe was trained at the famous Rorke's Drift art and Craft Centre in Natal in the 1960's
alongside artists including Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo and Vuminkosi Zulu. He is generally less
well known than his contemporaries mostly because he died tragically in a car accident at the age of 26.
Using aquatint and drypoint etching techniques, Shilakoe made dark, but shimmering images of lonely
figures in desolate spaces. Unlike Mbatha and Muafangejo, Shilakoe made little reference to religious
stories, rather presenting a deeply personal, psychological state drawing on his dreams and his cultural
belief systems. In Follow the footsteps you will find her sleeping, the high contrast image seems quite
abstract at first, but tracing the odd shapes, one can make out two ungainly figures. A large abstracted
character lies horizontally across the centre of the picture plane, with starkly white legs, no arms and a
haunting, hollow face. In front of her is a smaller figure standing with its back to us, whose arms are also
tightly contained within a cylindrical body. It has been suggested that the sleeping figure is Shilakoe's
grandmother, with whom he was very close. Made not too long before the artist's death, this print is
almost prophetic, Shilakoe's grandmother beckoning him into the afterlife. It also has a deep sense of
powerlessness and anxiety, reflecting the socio-political circumstances of the time, but in a remarkably
different style. In fact, Shilakoe's style is perhaps more closely related to that of contemporary artists
such as Penny Siopis and Robert Hodgins.