Diane Victor (born 1964, South Africa) is a renowned printmaker. ‘Birth of a Nation’ (a suite of 10 drypoint prints) is a critique of contemporary South African society. The title, ‘Birth of a Nation’ is a reference to the 1915 silent film, directed by D.W. Griffiths, ‘The Birth of a Nation’. Based on two historical novels, The Clansman, An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) and The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden (1902), the film recounts the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction through the eyes and experiences of Southern whites who vehemently opposed the political and social progress made by newly freed African Americans after the Civil War. Reflecting the tone of the novels, the film has been described as “a nightmare of interracial brutality, rape and castigation”, and has obvious parallels in South Africa. But equally the title refers to South Africa’s own political history, founded on, and in the Apartheid era, structured around racial discrimination. It also refers to the country’s efforts to redefine its values and identity in the wake of Nelson’s Mandela’s release from prison, his election as President and the shift to black majority government.

In these prints Victor takes a series of stories from classical myth and recontextualises them to create her own satirical version of a South African national narrative. Embedded in this narrative is a poignant yet savage commentary on the state of contemporary South African society, and the struggles and abuses which afflict the post-apartheid era. Amongst the issues addressed are environmentalism, political corruption, violent crime, and sexual and racial violence. Here the image is based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In the original story Theseus killed the Minotaur, a monstrous creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. In South Africa, there is a Zulu rite of passage which requires young men to kill a bull using their bare hands. Nowadays such customs are publicly condemned as unjustifiable cruelty. For the artist, this subject represents the difficulty of reconciling contemporary values with cultural traditions.