This panel of work portrays the dreams and nightmares, the mental suffering of prisoners who is nocturnally and perpetually tortured by despair, deprivation, depression, limitations, doubt and remorse. These images capture the feelings and reflections of the prisoners in their surreal dream space where dreams, nightmares and deliriums are intertwined and recur in no logical sequence.
This panel is a reworked selection of images from a larger body of work presented in my illustrated anthology of poems, “Illusions on Robben Island”. With that I attempted to translate, with empathy and intimacy, the psychological impact of incarceration.
Each image flows from clarity to blurred and dark obscurity, just as the prisoner’s mind drifts from reality in and out of this vast dream space, yet to experience another hallucination over and over again.
The imbedded text at the bottom of my images are extracts from my poetry and only readable from very close to the image. With this I endeavour to draw the viewer closer to the image, into the dream space. And only then share the notion depicted in the specific image with him/her utilizing the emotional power of poetry.
