Matikinca won the coveted title for her work titled Ndiziphiwe -They were given to me, a ceramic installation about underprivileged learners who wear school shoes that are handed down to them by their older siblings or family members.
By immortalising these shoes through the ceramic slip-casting method, they have been given a new purpose. This process also enables the artist to capture the essence of the used shoes, including every mark, scratch and hole. As ceramic sculptures, the shoes have been symbolically restored, but are also very fragile and breakable. This fragility is a metaphor for the precarity of the public schooling system of our country, where black South African learners are subjected to sub-standard education.
Pfunzo Sidogi, chairperson of the Sasol New Signatures Competition, said: “This year, 765 entries were submitted throughout the country. While the volume of entries declined from last year, the narrative power of the artworks was just as loud and profound. Poverty, love, religion, rape, climate change, displacement, are some of the individual and collective narratives captured throughout the hundreds of submissions. Every person has a story that needs to be told and I am particularly proud that this competition provides a space for all creative voices to be heard and seen”.
For 33 years, Sasol has been the proud sponsor of the New Signatures competition, which was established by the Association of Arts Pretoria in the late 1960’s.
“Sasol takes pride in helping to provide a platform for our nation’s burgeoning artistic voices to share their stories with a wider audience and record this for posterity. Sasol congratulates all the winners of the 2023 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition, as well as those artists whose works were selected for this exhibition. We wish them all a prosperous future ahead” said Elton Fortuin, Sasol Vice President: Group Communications and Brand Management.
