Chicken and Dust

Detail of installation from the exhibition Things Appear and Disappear by Johan Thom held at Johannesburg’s Kalashnikov Gallery in February 2023.

Between Chicken and Dust is a short story that responds to Johan Thom’s exhibition Things Appear and Disappear, shown at Johannesburg’s Kalashnikov Gallery in February 2023. The story explores themes of loss and trauma through a personal lens, drawing from a family’s oral history. It uses literature to express the narrator’s personal experience with the artworks, creating a space for reflection rather than a conventional critique.

The story also connects to ideas from Jennifer Lauwrens’s Embodiment and the Arts (2022), particularly how art brings out personal and subjective reflections. By blending historical and familial elements, it demonstrates how storytelling can reinterpret the past.

At the heart of the story is the narrator’s father, uTata, a storyteller. After waking from a coma with dementia and left-sided weakness, uTata’s fragmented memories and ongoing storytelling weave personal history with collective memory, myth, and legend. The narrator’s encounter with Thom’s art sparks reflection, engaging with themes of loss, memory, and collective trauma in postcolonial South Africa.

Between Chicken and Dust shows how art can reshape both personal and shared narratives