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Sharlene Khan
Page 1 | 2 | Biography
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For the last three years my work has been focusing on street life in various South African cities and the unique characteristics of each city center. Street trade has become proliferous in South Africa, due to various socio-economic as well as historical factors affecting South African society. An extremely high unemployment rate has forced many South Africans, male and female to live and work off these streets. The plight of these people are often overlooked, ignored or they are considered a nuisance to the sanitized utopia that many middle and upper class people would like to create in the city centers. Yet despite these attitudes, street trade continues to be a large unofficial trade in South Africa. In spite of their harsh economic
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circumstances, street vendors bring a sense of vibrancy, colour, smell, noise and humour to South African streets. In fact, the characteristics they bring make the different city centres in South Africa unique and are a huge draw card for international tourists wanting to get a sense of ‘Africa’.
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My work (which comprises of oil paintings, installations and mixed media drawings) hopes to bring to the fore this sector of society that is so sadly ignored, to depict the ‘humanness’ of these people we pass by daily – their dreams, hopes, struggles, wit and dignity. My work also combines oil painting and ink drawing to portray this ‘lower class’ society in what once was an upper class indulgence and to continue to question these attitudes towards the ‘fine arts’, by turning oil paintings into functional everyday objects e.g. clothes, bedspread, curtains, haircut salons. My work is a visual representation of my identity and all the influences upon it. Needlework in my paintings, as well as the depiction of Indian mehndi designs, biblical scriptures and poetry are meant to reflect my African, Indian, Chrisitan, female identity as well as my early apartheid education, and later tertiary education.
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‘Sharlene Khan takes the most ordinary of things and turns them into poetry. She makes us notice people and incident, landscape and pattern which we otherwise might miss’ (Artist Andrew Verster).
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IMAGE DESCRIPTION; 1. It Started of as them. 2. Doctcotza. 3.Man Down. 4. Two Fish and Five Loaves. 5 and 6. Two Fish and Five Loaves ( detail )
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