Still 

For his installation at Campbelltown Art Centre, Masamvu worked on a set of seven drawings which were in dialogue with his poem Still. The drawings depict the hybridization of a human body with different organic forms. Masamvu has left a mass of white space behind the figures, who float within it. This gives the drawings a sense of timelessness, we are not sure at what point of metamorphosis the bodies are in and how long this process will take, but we know it is important. 

The figures appear to be dying but there is a sense of regeneration, of re-creation within the act of dying itself so that they exist as an anti-dote to the dreadful stagnation depicted in the poem Still.  In Still a voice lists a series of circumstances. Each circumstance is preceded by the word Still, suggesting that the person listing these circumstances, whether they be tragic (Still holding the wound), bureaucratic (Still standing in the queue) or emotional (Still loving n’ hating) is trapped within a never ending cycle. Much of the poem deals with systems of control and the inequality and violence these systems breed. For example one line reads “Still running away from the police” while another reads “Still unpaid”. 

In contrast with the poem, the transformation the figures in the drawings undergo stands as testament to Masamvu’s continued belief in the redemptive ability of nature, to which we must return.