Existing comment:
Sacrifice.
They gave the best years of their lives to the struggle.
Prison Sentences reflects upon the marking and passing of time -- here, the jail time served by some of South Africa's most notable apartheid-era political prisoners. Each tablet is inscribed with the days, weeks, months, and years served by Nelson Mandela and seven other political prisoners who were initially sentenced to life imprisonment at the close of the Rivonia Trial held in June 1964.
Of the work, Willem Boshoff has said:
"The word 'sentence' refers to the term a prisoner serves, but it also denotes a grammatical whole with . . . an ending. Naming the work Prison Sentences alluded to the second meaning, the idea that one would expect a sentence to end. I wanted to evoke . . . a meditative quality arising from . . . counting days and passing time, to the point at which you lose yourself completely . . . Black granite is the material of a graveyard [and of] memorials. Each panel is reflective, so you see yourself in it." |