Deborah Bell; South African 1957-; Awakening The Motherland
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Literature : Pippa Stein (2004) Deborah Bell, Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing, illustrated in colour on pages 15 and 16.
Note : In two important transitional paintings, Awakening the Motherland, the black-suited man is lying over the woman. He is still dominant but tender and comforting, and she is enclosed in his embrace, quiescent. She is of Europe and of Africa: her head is the shape of a quattrocento Madonna by Piero della Francesca, but she is also wearing a form of traditional Ndebele headdress. She is barefoot, but it is the texture and shape of her clothing which resonate with her emotional and psychic state. She is swathed in cloths which are bound around her body like bandaging, a kind of protective skin like a cocoon. She is the chrysalis, in the process of becoming, of transforming. Her lover's hands and hers are entwined, their fingers touching the organs of her senses - her mouth and ears. In Gnosticism it is believing that a 'divine spark' of the human being needs to be awakened and integrated with its 'divine source'. This awakening is provided by a 'revealer-redeemer' who brings knowledge of the way to return to the 'divine source'. - Pippa Stein
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