Botha’s work, Wonderboom, is a series of 18 photographs in which a collection of objects, pinned or propped on a board, gradually disappear to leave a space whose marks can only hint at any previous content. Items including a map, a fork, a feather or a china dog, demand our attention, only to fade away.
Wonderboom tracks a trajectory of loss and disintegration. Layers of meaning are progressively stripped away, severing connections and associations as they disappear. The collection of objects comes to represent a mind that is slowly losing its grip on itself, a place slowly eroded, a history forgotten or confused. This visual entropy effects a tactile sense of loss, and reminds us that lived experience is predicated on complex layers of association which are ever vulnerable to disruption, destruction and delirium.
http://www.lienbotha.co.za/