Madonna and Child

A silkscreen print titled, Madonna and Child by the South African artist Willie Bester (b. 1956). The work depicts a mother, holding her baby with an army vehicle driving towards the viewer and spelling out the words “NEVER AGAIN” on the road which the vehicle will be driving over. This artwork is a reminder of the Soweto Student uprising on the 16th of June in 1976, where students protested for fair education in the country. As a result of many wrongs in the country due to the apartheid government in South Africa, many people were not able to get an education of value or even any education at all. Nelson Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world”. Willie Bester explores prevalent political and social issues of South Africa in his artworks. Such topics prominently feature in Bester's work as he was passionate about these issues due to his own experiences. Bester left school at the age of 10 to help his family financially due to the forced removal from their home under the Group Areas Act. As a struggle artist, Bester still makes use of these problems as he addresses the social and political developments in a post-apartheid South Africa within his art making. Bester’s choices of subject matter also include issues of crime, greed, poverty, corruption, government accountability and other contentious subject matters that need to be voiced and documented in the new South Africa artscape. Short biography: WIllie Bester was born in 1956 in the town Montagu in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In 1986, Bester studied art part-time at the Community Art Project in Cape Town and at the beginning of the1990s became a full-time artist. Bester participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Bester's artworks are also represented in major collections in South Africa and internationally. His works are found in private and other institutional collections such as the MTN Collection, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Smithsonian Institute in Washington and the University of Pretoria.