August: Ingci: I Am
Frontlit
Oil on teabags
180 x 200 cm
2022-2025
August: Ingci: I Am
Backlit
Oil on teabags
180 x 200 cm
2022-2025
The three winter quilts — June, July, August — are made to be read together as a single winter landscape and a single sentence. Be Still. And Know. I Am. It is a verse from Psalm 46, and it is a reminder to be rooted in self and faith. It speaks to what it means to feel content and grounded, a state I so deeply long for.
The three quilts together form the image of Nyonyane — the towering granite mountain above our home. In the winter light it is at its most beautiful: the cliffs catching the low sun, the bee-eaters’ azure wings threading through the cold air, the wind — uMoya — moving through the golden grass in slow rhythms.
Winter
Nyonyane’s granite cliffs cascade
to pools of golden grass.
Bee-eater’s azure dancing wings
carried on uMoya’s rhythmic breeze.
Aloes, tall like upright men,
shoot blaze-orange spears at dust-blue winter sky.
And all the while, I hear you sing
‘Be Still, and Know, I Am’.
Winter in Eswatini is my favourite time of year. An African winter is something else entirely. The grass turns golden-brown, swaying in the breeze. The aloes erupt into flames of red, orange, and yellow along the hillsides (oh, to live in a place where winter is ablaze with flowers). The sky goes pale blue and dusty. It is a landscape of restraint and fire at the same time, and it feeds something in me that the other seasons do not quite reach.
August: Ingci
This month references the shy aardwolf.
