‘Dead Mandela’ art sparks row
A PAINTING depicting Nelson Mandela as a corpse undergoing dissection has provoked disgust and been compared to witchcraft by South Africa’s governing party.
The artwork is a parody of Rembrandt’s 17th-century masterpiece The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.
It shows Mandela lying in a loincloth while Nkosi Johnson, an AIDS activist who died aged 12, points to his arm stripped of flesh.
The spectators include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and politicians F. W. de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
The artist, Yiull Damaso, argues South Africa must confront a subject that remains almost taboo: the future death of Mr Mandela. The country’s first black president turns 92 later this month.
The painting, which has been on display in Johannesburg, provoked a furious response from the ruling African National Congress.
”The ANC is appalled and strongly condemns in the strongest possible terms the dead Mandela painting,” said Jackson Mthembu, a party spokesman.
”It is in bad taste, disrespectful, and it is an insult and an affront to values of our society.
”In African society it is a foreign act of ubuthakathi [bewitch] to kill a living person and this so-called work of art … is also racist.”
But Damaso, 41, insists that he is using the image to convey a political argument. ”The idea just popped up in my head,” he said on Friday.
”We have Nelson Mandela, one of the great leaders of our time, and the politicians around him are trying to find out what makes him a great man.
”Nkosi Johnson, the only one in the painting who’s no longer alive, is trying to show them that Mandela is just a man.”
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