Untitled (Medusa)

Untitled (Medusa), was originally a sculpture created in 2005. The violin was bought from the University of Cape Town, and was then disassembled from its known and recognisable whole through smashing it before a passing street audience using a ten pound hammer. The fragments were collected and originally fastened together using brightly coloured elastic bands, banal and perishable everyday objects in relation to a previously respected object. Medusa refers to both the feared goddess Medusa, and the fallen ship Medusa in Theodore Gericault!s painting, an iconic painting of imbalance of power and instinctual survival and evoked by the vessel form. The elastic bands have long since perished and the sculpture achieved its full temporal state. Revisiting this sculpture in 2009 , new solutions had to achieve new signification. The act of smashing, still seen in marks of trauma on the fragments, still disarms the culturally significant object, but the elastic bands have been replaced with blonde horse hair, intended for the violin’s bow. The hair muffles the already broken parts, cocooning it, but also strangling it.