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Self Portraits in a Namibian landscape
Erika Hibbert
South AfricaGALLERYCONVERSATION
The generation of women to which I belong is defined by change. Change and changeability. Born in South Africa and becoming adults at the time of huge social and political change, we are the generation on the cusp.

Childhood belongs to an era that is considered and described as totally separate and apart from the present time. Markers from that time seem like strange relics — familiar but peculiar: Am I that girl on the beach who never saw a black person all holiday and was told it was because “Blacks don’t like water”?

Our late teens and early twenties found us reeling during a time of upheaval and confusion — self-discovery linked to newly discovered social realities, broken family relationships, and wild struggles for self-expression amid political struggle and erupting communities.

As an independent adult woman, I see us walking across the battlefields of devastated personal relationships and fractured lives and picking at bits and things that seem to have life left in them that we can hold, remold, adapt, breathe love into.

My generation of women come together from deeply divergent pasts to sticky-tape and bandage a society wounded by itself. In each other’s eyes we see pain and longing and confusion and hope and joy. Mostly I see us as the menders. Nothing is constant. Adaptation is essential. Taking on the challenges of change: nurturing our collective children, the younger generation, with values of caring and self-love and respect for all. And growing ourselves as precious individuals.
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