David Koloane
Untitled (the moon over Hillbrow Tower)
1998-2010
Oil and mixed media on canvas
124 x 110 cm
David Koloane’s art practice explored his own lived experiences of ‘the socio-political conditions created by the apartheid system of government,’ as the artist explained in an interview with ARTnews. In Untitled (the moon over Hillbrow Tower) (1998–2010), Koloane’s characteristic scraggly lines silhouette the high-rises of Johannesburg’s Hillbrow neighbourhood with a slinky white moon gleaming overhead. Hillbrow is known as one of the city’s most turbulent districts; in fact, the tower was first named after the South African Prime Minister JG Strijdom, an avowed white supremacist who actively strengthened apartheid policies in the early 1950s.