Building Mountains – A Sighting

Lungiswa Gqunta (b. 1990 Gqeberha, South Africa; lives in Cape Town, South Africa)

The sculpture is composed of rocks made of tightly wrapped razor wire that will rust and change color over time—a man-made object with the sole purpose to separate and either keep things or people contained or outside. These precarious rocks represent reflections on the state of being, of land and of living. They point to the privatization of land, to the forced displacement of communities, and to the long-standing history of colonial segregation that disrupted indigenous people’s relationship to land.