CC-BY-NC: Karen Stander This work is a durational drawing made over a series of days on the West Coast of South Africa and prepared for a specific site where it had to fit within size constraints. Presented as a scroll, only a portion is visible at any one time. The rest remains rolled, held just beyond view. The drawing holds marks shaped by wind, sand, rocks, movement, and the act of carrying. I look back on the process and also think it represents ‘sites’ I visited daily – sometimes it was the same ‘site’, but wind, sea currents and debris changed the markings onto which I placed my paper to make the drawings. The work is also about documenting my artistic or creative practice.
As a work, a fragment of time resists full visibility. What is seen is only a portion; It doesn’t try to hold the whole; It accepts that what we encounter is always partial. I’m interested in how memory and experience don’t arrive as complete images, but in fragments—revealed, obscured, and reconfigured through movement.
I walked the line where land gives way
and the edge continuously shifts before I can name it
A scroll was dragged along sand and rocks
where salt, grit and pressure allow marks
Now a reminder of contact as the paper holds a different time of
steps, drag, rub, steps, drag, rub
What is below rises as a trace
The paper holds a different time
compressed
folded into the rolled scroll.
What is seen has already passed
I invite you to walk again
not to arrive
but to remain alongside