Alexa Pienaar - Roer Melk Emmers/Stir Milk Buckets

Artist’s Statement

Roer Melk Emmers/Stir Milk Buckets

Roer, Melk Emmers/Stir, Milk Buckets consists of nine leather buckets balanced on a wooden installation and is loosely tied with rope to a horizontal wooden beam. The installation was inspired by the structures and processes used by farmers on dairy farms when feeding milk to the calves who reside in small stalls away from their mothers. The milk of the cows is poured/squeezed into plastic buckets which is then fed to the calves just outside of their stalls and placed upside down on a wooden structure/beam to rid of any excess milk and prevent it from going sour.

I found this process bizarre and alienating towards to calves, who feed on the rationed portions provided to them by the farmers, rather than feeding from the teats of their mothers and the natural milk that the cows are able to provide. I use this process, and the installation itself, metaphorically to present the viewer with both a problematic “young” or “new” South African landscape, and a space of possibility and healing within the South African society. I present an element of my own stance as a young, Afrikaans female in the South African landscape by including Afrikaans words that speak of both problematic elements within the Afrikaner culture as well as words that refer to bonds and possibilities of growth for the South African society.

While this act of feeding is presented as problematic through the inclusion of crude Afrikaans words it also serves as a space of communing with words that refer to family, bonds and growth, which is ultimately the function of this installation - a space of communication, healing and growing, despite a problematic past.