Bust of Nelson Mandela
Clo Bourgard
Praça Nelson Mandela
This sculpture is an artistic tribute to Nelson Mandela’s fundamental contribution to the defence of freedom. The sculpture, a huge mirrored head two meters high, rises from the ground as if it were a ‘captured voice’, declaring to the heavens a fundamental principle – Man is a free Being!
This work, in addition to representing Mandela, also mirrors the observer. There is a purposeful fusion in this work. Mandela’s head seeks to awaken our attention to adverse realities, inside and outside our social and cultural circle, to our place in society. So that we can continue Madiba’s “struggle” – justice, racial inclusion and equal opportunities – with the head being the expression of historical memory and its (external) reflection from the mirrored matter, from everything that exists around it.