why assemblage?

Someone once asked me to describe my first experience with/discovery of art. The answer explains my fascination with assemblage.

The lion in the trees

When I was in primary school my family lived next to the largest air-force base in the country. Impala and Mirage jets regularly, annoyingly, screamed north, taking Death and Destruction to unknowable enemies in far-away places. But occasionally, a demigod would appear. A spectacle worthy of running outside and staring awestruck at the sky: the mighty Hercules. A man-made thunderstorm. The deep thud thud thud of its massive engines reverberating through the marrow of your bones.

At the end of the runway and bordering our suburb lay open veld. It was fenced all round with shiny razor-wire loops, decorated at rhythmic intervals with signs bearing skulls, crossbones, and the words DANGER GEVAAR INGOZI.

Beyond this fence, amidst scraggly bushes and trees lived a lone statue. It was of a lion in recumbent pose, resembling the logo on Lion matchboxes.

A steep embankment meant that seeing it from the road was quite difficult. You needed an elevated position, like a seat on a school bus (not those yellow American ones, but a bare metal box on balding wheels).

View of the fenced veld seen from Veldpou Street, Monument Park Extension 2, Pretoria; Google maps

One specific seat enabled maximum statue-viewing ability. Claiming it often meant getting trapped by the friend who transformed every human interaction into an opportunity to complain about how she had no friends. I debated whether I should inform her it was her obvious yearning to be liked by everyone that made her so unlikeable. I can’t recall if I did.

The statue lay alongside a long stretch of road that provided enough distance for the bus driver to accelerate joyously.

This meant that each pass only gave me a few seconds of intense observation to extract as much information about the lion as possible. Every hard-won fragment contributing to an ever-evolving replica in my brain.

Recumbent lion statues observed at speed*

Most people I asked about the statue either had no interest in it, or were unaware of its existence. A few knew something from hearsay. According to some, the statue was a grave marker. Others suggested that it was the only remnant of a farmhouse that once stood there. The most intriguing rumor was that it was the creation of one of the laborers who built the first of the new suburb’s homes.

Every night he would scale the fence and construct his beast on forbidden land from stolen cement.

Where the sculptor was benign, the lion was created to guard the new suburb. Where the sculptor was malicious, the statue was designed to receive dark rituals. A curse, soaking up the shadows of the death-machines flying over it. I heard that someone recalled a neighbor telling them about an unnamed person who supposedly saw a mysterious figure doing a strange dance around the lion late one moonlit night. It was the kind of story that thrives within a child’s mind.

An incidental assemblage

I never managed to see that sculpture from up close. I don’t know if it was carved from stone or crafted from cement. I don’t know if its forms were beautifully expressed, or crude and naïve. The inability to clearly see it, understand it, or know anything definitively true about it, undoubtedly fueled my fascination.

But of more significance was the context in which the lion existed.

The forbidden veld, the razor-wire fence, the warning signs, matchboxes, the angry jets, the majestic Hercules, the far away destruction of strangers because “they hate us”, the bus ride, the frustrating friend, and the ultimately unknowable motives of an unknown sculptor. The cryptic object amongst the trees was simply the nexus of a much larger network of associations. I was beguiled by an assemblage.

*from top left: stone statue in Bogyvtsi Edal Anton Lefterov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Stone statue in Montelimar park Médiathèques Valence Romans agglomération, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons; Statue on a building in Glasgow Road Thomas Nugent / Lion statue; Plaster model of Louis Saint Gaudens lion statue Boston Public Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Sculpture outside New York Public LibraryEdward Clark Potter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Guardian statue from the temple of Inshushinak Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons