We won’t move, 2026
Acrylic and oil on reclaimed metal sheet
77 cm x 99 cm
Artist’s Statement
This work was not made on a canvas. It was made on a wall.
The corrugated steel sheet that carries this painting was pulled from the same environment it depicts — the township, where zinc and iron sheeting are not art materials, but the walls people live behind, the boundaries of home, the surface that separates inside from outside. To paint on it is not a stylistic choice. It is an act of truth-telling.
Two figures stand against the surface — pantsula, rooted, unmoving. Around them the rust has done its own work, bleeding through decades of weather and wear. The words WE WONT MOVE are not a slogan. They are a declaration made by communities across South Africa who have been told, again and again, to go. To relocate. To make way. Alexandra has heard these words. It has refused them.
The figures do not look away. They hold their ground the way communities hold their ground — not through force, but through presence, through dignity, through the simple refusal to disappear.
The steel remembers what happened before this painting existed. The rust is not damage — it is evidence. Together, the material and the image become a single testimony to resilience, belonging, and the right to remain.
