Artist and educator Michael Barry and visual artist and musician Garth Erasmus open their joint exhibition at the Nelson Mandela University’s Bird Street gallery on Thursday.
“I believe art should play a role in developing human senses by interpreting and decoding our daily realities,” NMU department of arts, culture and heritage deputy director Barry said.
“This exhibition attempts to honour those intangible ‘heritages’ that reflect the common collective spirituality of my community.”
Erasmus’s Xnau drawings are his way of communicating cultural awareness and breaking down prejudices.
“Xnau is a Nama-Khoi term for initiation.
“Initiation in the Khoi sense does not refer to a classic rite of passage, but to a sacred process of self-initiation usually undertaken as when one is an adult)that entails a process of isolation and sensitisation in a sacred setting,” Erasmus said.
“My personal Xnau manifests in my creative work and has become a recurring metaphor to encompass a narrative for healing in society.
The exhibition opens at 6pm.