Johannes Phokela (b. 1966, Soweto)

Original Sin

2023, oil on canvas, 120 x 80 cm.

Image courtesy of Eclectica Contemporary ©Johannes Phokela

This painting is one of several Phokela has modelled on European religious paintings such as Pieter Paul Rubens's Fall of the Damned.  Here we see dozens of figures hurled down into Hell by the Archangel Michael and his fellow angels. The naked bodies are engulfed by clouds of blue flames and swirl downwards, writhing in terror. At the bottom of the scene we see a group of sinister hooded figures who seem to be marshalling a group of prisoners towards their terrible end.  An earlier version of the painting featured figures in pointed hats and the stumbling man from Goya’s Witches Flight as well as hooded figures like the those in Goya’s Witches Sabbath. These images, and the painting’s title, suggest a world in which humans have abandoned both belief and reason and float in a state of nightmarish oblivion.