The photographs posted for the Magic Lantern, prompted realisation that my father Dirk Duivestein could well have been influenced by these.  He emigrated to South Africa from the Netherlands, in 1933. A rebel and threatened with jail, he also escaped from the rigid Calvinist doctrines imposed on him by his autocratic parents and society at that time.

 

I have included in the imagery, quotes from our family Bible, in Dutch, endorsing man’s dominion over nature, Genesis 1;28 as well as script from the family records dating back 5 centuries. Anthropocentric views have been blamed on Christian beliefs (partly disputed in Leviticus 25:13). Fish, birds, a cow, a frog and a photograph of my parents (1938), in Dutch national dress, and my father as a boy, are grouped together.

 

This collage I had printed on silk which I stitched onto a frame. The overlay distorts  and repeats the images, creating an unstable, dreamlike whole.

 

My thesis is focused on the degradation and reparation of the Umgeni River Beachwood Mangroves estuary. I do believe that I have a personal responsibility as a descendant of Calvinists and Plymouth Brethren (on my maternal side), to challenge bigoted beliefs in humans as having power offer nature. My position as an artist  affords this opportunity, to draw attention to the current state of our estuary.