Untitled

A man hovers in the doorway at the back of the painting Las Meninas. Is he coming in or going out? Jose Nieto Velazquez is a liminal character, and it is this liminal quality that defines the figure of Soutie, a South African colloquial term for Soutpiel. Soutpiel, directly translated in Afrikaans means slaty penis, it refers to any British orientated person in South Africa. One who has one foot in Britain and one in South Africa and therefor his penis is salty from being dipped into the Atlantic ocean.

Soutie looks both backwards and forwards, she has two sets of feet, one  set points to Europe and the other Africa. Her/his gender is indeterminate,  and like a paper doll, scissors hover in between the two halves’ of Soutie, ready to cut along the dotted line to separate the past from the present.