Profile of Andries Botha

Andries Botha is an international renowned sculptor and human rights activist. His art is concerned with power, western value systems, colonialism, apartheid, ethnicity, global conflict, economic migration, philosophy, and mythology.

Botha's activism includes such work as Bheka Phambile, a 1994 collaboration with Sam Ntshangase to create a skills-based creative training program for women. In 1999, he founded Create Africa South, a nongovernmental organization committed to promote creativity in South Africa. In 2001, Botha conceptualized a creative memory project committed to developing economic autonomy for black South African women.

In the early nineties, Botha served in the new democratic government of South Africa as National Visual Arts Chairperson, with a mandate to co-ordinate a visual arts report on the state and vision of creativity. The report informed the creation of a national cultural policy for the arts.

Botha is the founder and chairman of Community Arts Workshop, creating access to the arts for previously disadvantaged South Africans.

• Weblinks
• Personal Website
• Portrait, Contemporary Art in South Africa
• Create Africa South
• Interview, Sculpture Magazine