Exhibition’s focus on serial killers

CAITLIN Greenberg wanted to host her exhibition on the plot where the serial killer who is the catalyst for her art once lived.

She was raised in Waverley in Pretoria, a few kilometres from Capital Park where Gert van Rooyen once roamed.

Van Rooyen and his lover, Joey Haarhoff, are suspected to have kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed at least six girls between 1988 and 1989.

Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and then committed suicide on January 16 1990 after the police started chasing them.

Greenberg abandoned the idea of setting up the exhibition where Van Rooyen lived in Malherbe Street due to ethical considerations.

Her “Shadow-Light” exhibition is for her master’s degree at the Tshwane University of Technology.

When you enter the exhibition the large portrait of Van Rooyen looms over the dark room.

It is made up of small mosaic blocks partially filled with photographs of the couple’s alleged victims, who have never been found.

“It was almost trying to give back the girls’ identity, because their identity was taken away from them by this massive portrait within the media.”

Greenberg’s thesis drew on the ideas of Siegmund Freud, Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marshal McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard and applied them to serial killers Van Rooyen and Ted Bundy, the movie Natural Born Killers, and the books and television series Dexter as case studies.

She wanted to tease out the “shadow” within humanity and the media’s interest in the macabre.

The exhibition runs until January 28.