Africanis, Afrikaner, 2026
Photography, Edition 1 of 10
60,5 cm x 43 cm
Artist’s Statement
Meet Joe; he is an Africanis, a mixed breed dog unique to South Africa. Meet Jacobus; he is an Afrikaner, a white male unique to South Africa. Jacobus and I, an English South African who can barely string an Afrikaans sentence together, have been in relationship for over six years. Here we are at the Witsand resort in the Western Cape, waiting for the keys to our weekend huisie. In South Africa, historical segregation informed the landscape we live in; today it is still prevalent in the spatial apartheid of the city street system that cuts off townships, and in holiday towns such as Witsand where language defines culture and accessibility.
‘Africanis, Afrikaner’ taps into the tradition of documenting ‘Afrikaners’ in varying ways, from photographers David Glodblatt, Roger Ballen and Roelof van Wyk to literature like The Last of the Afrikaners by Hermann Giliomee, a book that Jacobus worked on as a researcher at Stellenbosch University in the 2010s. My perspective is that of a newly recruited outsider (there is still a lot of animosity towards English people, something I was not aware of before).
From the inside of the car – I will get sunburnt if I’m outside – I watch as Joe scratches, Jacobus tans; the sun beats down, the wind howls, the grass gets drier. In the bottom left, there is a small entjie, discarded by the Afrikaner. There is humour, curiosity and love. This is my new family, my Africanis and Afrikaner.
