ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Sarah Volker
[T]aut, tethered, and torn explores the tension between a dancer’s body and mind, where physical endurance intersects with emotional strain. The body retains experiences — some too deeply embedded to be processed by thought alone — and dance becomes a way to feel, express, and endure.
This sculptural installation uses ballet tights filled with stones, bricks, and cement blocks. Some are stretched to their limits and hung, while others envelop broken cement, causing the fabric to tear and strain. The weighted forms are pinned at the waist, their “legs” dragged downwards, embodying both physical pressure and psychological burden.
The work responds to the fixation on weight and bodily control within dance culture, where phrases like “Suck in your stomach; I can see your lunch” reflect the constant scrutiny dancers face. Here, weight becomes literal — gravity acting on the material as it does on the body, revealing moments of rupture, fragility, and persistence.
By drawing on objects associated with the dancer’s body, the work reflects on the invisible demands placed upon it: to be light, graceful, and endlessly controlled. It questions what is sacrificed in the pursuit of perfection and how the body bears the marks of these expectations.
Ultimately, Taut, tethered, and torn speaks to the resilience and vulnerability of the body under pressure — tethered by discipline, torn by expectation, and yet enduring.
Figure 3. Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo. Ngaphansi kwesithunzi sakhe (Under His Shadow). Sheep hide on canvas. 63 cm X 80250 cm X 120 cm
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo
[E]ngraved on sheep and goat hide are quiet traces — Grandmother, Mother, Granddaughter. A living archive. A tree that keeps growing, reaching beyond what we can see. A gesture toward infinity.
The work is born from family photographs — fragile, fading, yet full. It speaks to memory’s delicate threads and our endless desire to hold on. Beneath folds of hide lie images, partially hidden, waiting for hands and eyes to search. Layers upon layers of time, of tradition, of love passed down.
There is presence, and there is absence. The hide, once a symbol of Zulu tradition, becomes something more: a quiet personal sermon on faith. On needing a Shepherd to guide us through life.
Once alive, once warm with breath, now it bears the marks of another kind of life. To print and engrave on hide is to press into what was once living. It is an act of reverence and resistance. A gesture of permanence against the slow erosion of infinite time. The force of engraving cuts through the surface, echoing the depth of inheritance, of faith, of grief.
Sorghum seeds frame the work- small, sacred, resilient. They recall ceremonies of life and death. They remind me that nothing truly ends. That which we plant, will rise again.
What still stands?
The memory.
The prayer.
The seed.
Faith
Trivia
[O]ne of my earliest encounters with conceptual art was with the work by Renier Le Roux titled Four and two half bricks when I started working at the Pretoria Art Museum in the summer of 1999. It is one of those works that reinforces the dictum, what you see is not always what you get. When the bricks are displayed; although there is no limitation on how this can be done except that they must be set on the floor. It looks as if someone who might have been packing some bricks away left these lot behind by mistake. The kicker is that when you pick any of them up, expecting them to be of a considerable weight like any normal brick out there, they are surprisingly light. Because they are made of foam!
21 September
© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong, 2026
To reference this audio documentation please cite:
Kgokong, M.A. 2026. Intraparadox, Interview with Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo & Sarah Volker. Behind Materiality. 4 Sep 2025. Mmutleak.com-Intraparadox.
Reference credits
List of figures
- Sarah Volker. Taut, Tethered and Torn. Ballet tights, stones and ceramic blocks. 90 cm X 250 cm X 120 cm
- Sarah Volker. Courtesy of SASOL New Signatures Visual Art Competition
- Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo. Ngaphansi kwesithunzi sakhe (Under His Shadow). Sheep hide on canvas. 63 cm X 80250 cm X 120 cm
- Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo. Courtesy of SASOL New Signatures Visual Art Competition
Afterwords
* Original Image of Sarah Volker and Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo, courtesy of SASOL New Signatures Art Competition
<> I remain grateful to Sarah Volker and Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo for agreeing to sit with me for this dual interview. Le ka moso.
Intraparadox 
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