RAD 110 – Chillingly Plantation

Original Sold

This frieze exists in a shallow cave beneath an overhang of rock about 18 meters long.

There is a very clear, red antelope on the right of the painting. The long muzzles and curved horns are clear indications that hartebeest have been depicted here in the running position. After the eland, the hartebeest was the trickster deity, /Kaggan’s, favourite animal. In San beliefs, animals had supernatural powers which could be harnessed by shamans to enable them to perform certain rituals. The San people who created the art were a Shamanistic society. Their beliefs and cosmology were intertwined with the natural world around them. As Turner, 1969 states; “the states and rites of liminality and ambiguity are almost everywhere in such societies, held as sacred and holy. Possibly because they (shamans), have the power to dissolve the very basis of social structure and are accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency”.

The colour white, has in many communities in Africa, strong connotations with the spirit world. It is interesting that the two bovine animals in this scene have been painted in white. Large herbivores such as eland, hippo, elephant and cattle were, in certain contexts, seen as rain animals and in such contexts, had great significance for the San people who lived in a largely dry environment in Southern Africa. Parts of the animals have been outlined in red. Horns are clearly visible on the right hand animal. Two hunters with spears, bows and arrows have been painted over the left animal. All images that could be discerned on the rock surface, no matter how faded or incomplete, have been recorded in this documentary painting. This accounts for the wide variety of marks on the documentary painting. A small antelope, quite likely a grey rhebok has been painted in yellow in the centre left of this frieze.

View of Chillingly Plantation