City of Saints

This work was a third year project, the theme was 'suburbia'. I grew up in Grahamstown, a small town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa where the city center and commercial areas are merged with the suburban. Christianity is the predominant religion within this small town, which has an abundance of churches and chapels. As a Jewish child, I was educated in an Anglican school, where I had to partake in chapel services, and other religious activities, which were compulsory for any student that attended the institution, regardless of one's own religion.

For my representation of 'suburbia', I decided to create an image that I felt best represented Grahamstown in light of these religious aspects. I created a collage of all the places of prayer (majority Christian churches and chapels) within the town. If you are to look at the image more closely, I included the minority i.e. the temples, which consisted of only two (one on Rhodes University campus, and one in the Somerset Heights suburb), as well as the one and only synagogue in the town, which I attended for significant holidays and weekly Shabbats.

I placed the synagogue in the center of the image to portray my religion, its minority within the town, and with the churches and chaples surrounding my particular place of prayer, this format was intended to signify the influences from other people I had to endure while growing up. Thus this work not only represents the theme of 'suburbia', but also could be considered as a metaphorical self portrait.