Roots

Moving to Pretoria when I was ten completely changed my relationship with Durban. As time went on, the township, the school streets, and the places I grew up around started feeling distant, almost as if the city had moved on without me, and the spaces had shrunk in my memory. Returning to those thoughts brings up a mix of nostalgia and comfort, because that environment played such a huge part in shaping who I am, the relationships I had, and the things I care about today.
My final piece uses a graphite portrait of my younger self front and center to hold on to that memory as clearly as possible. The background, painted in softer watercolor tones, shows the Durban streets outside my old school the exact route my grandma and I used to take on the bus every morning. Including elements like the brick buildings, graffiti, and older cars helps capture the everyday atmosphere of those morning commutes. Placing my younger self directly in that scene is my way of bridging the gap between who I was then and the distance I feel now.