Jo Ractliffe | 'As Terras do Fim do Mundo'

Check out this exhibit at the Michael Stevenson gallery, a solo exhibition of new work by Cape Townian, Jo Ractliffe.

"Over the past two years Ractliffe has been tracing the routes of the Border War fought by South Africa in Angola through the 1970s and 80s, travelling alongside ex-soldiers returning to the places where they fought for the first time since the SADF's withdrawal from the region. Her new body of work follows Terreno Ocupado (2007), in which she explored the social and spatial demographics of Angola's capital city of Luanda five years after the country's civil war had ended. She writes: 'During my time in Luanda, a second project began to suggest itself, one in which my attention would shift away from the urban manifestation of aftermath to the "space" of war itself.' As Terras do Fim do Mundo (The Lands of the End of the World), Ractliffe captures the eerie silence of the traces of war. Her haunting images explore the idea of landscape as pathology; how past violence manifests in the landscape of the present, both forensically and symbolically."

'On the road to Cuito Cuanavale I'

'Unmarked mass grave on the outskirts of Cuito Cuanavale'

'Ring-barked tree near Indungo'

'On the road to Cuito Cuanavale IV'

'Ambush site near Mupa'

'Scarecrow in a cornfield near Chitembo'

'Deminer near Cuvelai'

'On the road to Jamba'

'Mural in an abandoned schoolhouse, Ompapa'

'Unidentified memorial in the desert, south of Namibe II'

 The show goes on til 27 November 2010.