Alexia Webster (’08) Reviewed

From American Suburb X:

Alexia Webster, HOGSBACK, stands out from the other works that’s exploring a place and its people with her richly saturated colour photographs that carries a darkness, and something magical, fantasy-like about them. Besides the cosmic environments, Webster has made portraits of people and animals in the forest and the village of Hogsback. The visual impression is so vivid and almost surreal that some animals are looking ’photo-shopped’ into the lush flourishing green, blue, and brown surroundings. Many of the photographs are taken during night with ambivalent light sources enhancing the mystical atmosphere. A brief history is given of the first settlers, the missioners, that ancests to the people now either living in the town or being in exile due to their ’black’ origin. ”Today, 19 years after the fall of apartheid, the village is still a hauntingly beautiful but unsettled landscape struggling to come to terms with the ghosts of its past and the inequalities of the present.
This project explores the village now and searches for a glimpses of those spirits, including my own ancestors, who roam these ancient and haunted forests.”

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