Connections in Maboneng

ARTWORK LINKS HUMAN STATUES TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE SURROUNDING BUILDINGS Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to

William Kentridge walked past a cafe window in Maboneng, paused and backtracked a little, gazing down the alley next door. When I finished my food I raced out to see what he had been looking at. In a fairly narrow alley there were larger-than-life-sized black steel cut-outs being festooned with what looked like netting by men on ladders.

I was thinking there was a strong chance the cut-outs were by Kentridge, considering his interest and his famous urban cut-out collaboration, The Firewalker. I didn’t think he was one of the cut-outs. But here he is, in the centre of what used to be a canal running between Fox and Main. He’s got a big cable-lace ruff around him.

A sixteen-year-old pupil is idling next to the silhouette of Hayley Evans, Maboneng cultural manager, on a bench. It’s fun to see how people are using this newly-concreted art street above the canal. I can get straight from Gringo Café at Craftsmen’s Ship to Yogiberry in Fox Street through a pedestrian gallery.

It’s now called Walking Street and the artwork comprising all the figures is called Human Intersection and it was created by Kim Lieberman, known for her lace– themed projects.

Cables looped in real lace patterns link the people to the surrounding buildings too.

Kim takes us for an aerial view up through a building housing architects and I am delighted to find Babette’s Breads on the first floor. From there we have a good view of the ties that bind these important people of Maboneng.

A captivating detail is that what looks like a metal shadow pool at the base of every silhouette sculpture is a completely reliable silhouette, as seen from the top down. On the statue of Kim, a lock of her long hair down her back is visible in her silhouette below.

Even threading through a few bottoms and shoulders, the lines zigzag, connecting the architects to the street guard, to the shopkeeper, to the tour guide to the Ethiopian restaurateur to the local school principal to the publicist to the visionary to William Kentridge, who was here from the start.