Bester began creating artworks in 1988 at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town. There were no teachers and no materials, but the institution enabled him to interact with art students his own age, and they taught each other. His first two works were Forced Removals and Don't Vote, {images of both: bester forced removals; bester don't vote} inspired by the Apartheid government and its laws. The medium he chose to express his protest themes was a collage of waste material and conventional artistic forms that have since become one of his trademarks. His use of space and photography were quite tentative (he only acquired a zoom lens for his camera in 1990), and also in his use and symbolism regarding the township waste he included in his works. However, the success of these works encouraged him to pursue art full-time.
| Over the next four years Bester enlarged the scale of his compositions and started using a greater variety of township discarded materials to build up the surface and increase the sense of spatial dimensions of his works. He now tends to depict the indomitable spirit of the oppressed people of South Africa. He also developed a desire to express the complex experiences of township life, and his own personal history within it. For example, in Greenpoint, Khayelitsha Bester recalls the delivery truck his father used to own. The truck was a vintage vehicle, and "out of fashion", to the young Bester. He would even try and hide from the passers-by when traveling in it. The police often stopped black people and harassed them for no reason, and Bester has many memories of this, while traveling with his father. Now, looking back, Bester says "If I had that truck now, I would easily put it in my studio [on display]." |  Greenpoint Khayelitsha |
 Open Door Policy |
From 1989 until 1993, Bester has dealt with social as well as political realities. In his work entitled Open Door Policy, he is commenting on the statement made by former president FW De Klerk upon the unbanning of all political parties including the African National Congress in 1990. De Klerk assured the country that his door would always be open to anyone wishing to negotiate peacefully with his government. Bester's work was a cynical reminder that South Africa was still a brutal police state, where the promises of the government are often superficial and result in even more deaths. |
During this same period, Bester's works have a specific theme which is made up of many different smaller events which may or may not be illusionistic in themselves. Bester uses this pictoral style to show his very strong feelings about what he is addressing. He also uses it to express fragments of his own biography.
Bester also celebrates the lives and achievements of principal subjects in his works, as can be seen in Tribute to Chris Hani (see later). However, he makes it clear that the lives of these people have been led under the most dehumanising circumstances, where Apartheid South Africa systematically degraded its oppressed people and eliminated their leaders. Bester achieves this by the use of symbols such as the Pass books which indicate the racial classification, and machine parts that spew out the rigid identities into which South Africa divided its population. The scattering of stencil numbers and lettering throughout the works suggest the arbitrary methods of classification and the reduction of human individuality to zero. The numbered tin cups that are so often part of the iconography of Bester's works relate to the sense of reduced humanity. The cups also represent the necessary and uncomplaining suffering people have to undergo as a result of the system of Apartheid. The musical instruments that often appear in Bester's works represent things such as social harmony and vitality, but they also illustrate the Afrikaans expression "Jy sal moet dans soos die musiek speel," which roughly translates as "You have to dance as the music dictates."
We will be analysing the following four paintings in detail all done in 1993 by Willie Bester. A common thread among them is that they are all set in the context of a Western Cape township or are representational of such. Each also juxtaposes different realities - such as landscape, portraiture and symbolic forms all occurring in the same work - to create visual statements on particular themes or issues. Also, all four are dedicated to victims: two record the suffering of deprivation of ordinary South Africans and the other two commemorate assassinated political prisoners.
