Back in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released and you no longer had to live in exile. After a year in New York, you returned to South Africa, where you started writing for newspapers and making art. What kind of art scene was there in Johannesburg at the time?

The period between 1990 and 1994, when you had the end of apartheid and the beginning of something else, was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was also a time when one had no choice but to fill various roles within the art world. There was no context, no structure for art and artists. There was a very small, little art world. It was extremely regimented in terms of what was permitted, and there was no space for dissent. There weren’t artist-run spaces. Artists were, in a way, castrated, you could say.

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Thanks Stephen Friedman Gallery for images