A commission by a mall in East London to me and three other artists to paint their promotional eggs and speak of the beauty of the Eastern Cape at Easter time.
I set out to question the Safrican celebration of Easter, a European tradition observing the advent of Spring and its associated rituals of fertility, most famously symbolised by rabbits and eggs. I ask why it is that, on the opposite side of the world, where we're going into Autumn and seeing a 'dying off' of Summer harvests, we still choose to celebrate a tradition that speaks to a different natural environment and climate. I want to know where the African traditions are: what are the Autumn rituals of our people; are there any celebrations for the oncoming Winter such as the Europeans have in the tradition of Halloween, where the pumpkin is venerated as the last of the Summer fruits and the onset of Winter is celebrated with dressing up as ghouls and spirits?
The answer came in the form of the old isiXhosa word for the month of April, 'uTshazimpunzi' which speaks of the colours we see in drying grasses and the duikers. This is 'The month of the withering pumpkins'. It's a wonderful accident: we're actually having a pumpkin moment here in Southern Africa, an undercover Halloween of our own - only ours is masked in the tradition of Easter imported by European colonists. I ask: are there others out there who believe we Africans have enough rich cultures of our own to revive and celebrate? Is it perhaps time to let go of cultures and ways of being that do not speak to our languages, our land?
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