TAXI-005: Lien Botha, Artist's Book

Lien Botha is a Cape Town-based fine art photographer and installation artist, whose work has been widely exhibited and is to be found in major collections around South Africa. The artist has always preferred enigma as her point of entry. Her photographs, never things in themselves, are shifted, touched, re-contextualised. Traces rather than signs are what interest her... Light and shade rather than bold colour, fickle memory rather than received history, movement rather than stillness. Gently unsettling, her art seeks out the depth in a thing and the shifting surfaces that cloud the perceived object. Author of many successful works of fiction and art criticism, Ashraf Jamal has woven an eloquent text around Botha's oeuvre, drawing on postmodern theory and poetic ressentiment alike. For this book Lien has collaborated with poet Karen Press and struck up a fascinating dialogue of meaning and imagery showing Press words flowing alongside the beautiful reproductions of Botha's work.