The Sneaker: Colbert Mashile

Day Seven of South Africa's The Lockdown Collection showcases a painting by Colbert Mashile, "The Sneaker." We behold two animal figures in anthropomorphic form, a standing white goat wearing a light green sweater with collar,  and cast in a darker shadow a hyena, its dangerous teeth bared, standing ominously just behind him, wearing the same kind of sweater but of a darker color.  Mashile writes of the work,

"The hyena signifies the sneakimg encroachment of time. The goat represents the timid, ignorant and easy-going man. Time will eventually catch up with us all: its always  hovering behind our backs and time is the enemy of our soul..The waiting game of this quarantine period confronts us with the true meaning of time and anticipation which we normally take for granted amidst the toilings of everyday life."

Colbert Mashile (born 1972, Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga) often references in his work complex mythological and ritual themes drawn from his coming of age in a rural Venda community in Mpumalanga.  Having herded goats as a child with his age-mates, he has extensive experience protecting his flock from predators, including hyenas. In many rural southern African communities, hyenas are understood as witchcraft familiars, or as dangerous beings into which malevolent persons may nocturnally transform themselves. The hyena, while a terrifying alien being, can also be understood as a manifestation of the most feared aspect of a person's mind, the interior forces that threaten to destroy him or her from within.

Hence, I suggest, the formal parallels between the goat and the hyena in the painting, which both take on human-like bidepal appearance and are wearing the same article of clothing. At one level, the hyena may be read as entirely alien, a dangerous invader from the bush, stalking the unsuspecting goat-victim. Yet, the hyena can also be read as emanating from within the goat/human subject, as if he is stalked by aspects of his own fears and self doubts. The human fear of mortality and encroaching time, many sangoma (traditional healers) explain, can drive people to the dark arts of witchcraft, unleashing hidden reservoirs of anger and jealousy that ramify outwards to ravage kith and kin.

Clemant Mashile in studio with "The Sneaker'

The painting's scenario is thus highly appropriate to the current moment, as humanity finds itself stalked, in a sense, by a pathogen that is partly our own creation, born of the trafficking of wild animals (including bats and pangolins) and failures of public health planning.   In quarantine, time lies heavy on us, and may play tricks with themind.  Time, like the hyena and the novel coronavirus, does sneak up on us, and threatens to outsmart us all.

Yet, none of these forces can be triumphed over by regarding them entirely as external to the self. True healing and protection must come from self-exploration and the strengthening of the mind and soul, as we recognize the dark undergound of our interior psychic  and spiritual landscapes, and as, through growing self-knowledge, we strive to integrate the varied poles of our existence.