Willem Boshoff

Panifice. 2001
Engraved granite bread, granite bread boards
Installation at the yard of the Conservatorio Marcello, Campo Pisani.

In his installation Panifice, South African artist Willem Boshoff continues his exploration of language and text. Drawing from Christ's question in St. Mathew’s Gospel, chapter 7, verse 9, (‘Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?’) which Boshoff has translated into numerous languages and inscribed on stone-loaves, the artist uses the idea of communion or ‘breaking bread’ (panifice) to address the universality of human experience across divides of language, culture or race.The vagaries of place and tongue, Boshoff indicates, are secondary to the fact of our common humanity.