A Striking Mandela Memorial

While there will no doubt be many memorials, statues, paintings, and art installations honoring nelson Mandela, this one — which I just stumbled upon yesterday — was constructed in 2012 on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s arrest in 1962.

This steel sculpture was erected on the exact spot where Mandela was arrested in the village of Howick. It looks deceptively simple, with fifty steel rods that symbolize the bars behind which he was held. But you just need move around it to find out what it really is meant to be.

South African artist Marco Cianfanelli’s sculpture  of Mandela’s profile spans 50 steel columns measuring between 21 and 29 feet tall, each one anchored to the concrete-covered ground. The shape and form of the sculpture represent Mandela’s 27 years behind bars for his efforts to bring equal rights and governmental representation to South Africa.

‘It represents the momentum gained in the struggle [since] Mandela’s capture. The 50 columns represent the 50 years since his capture, but they also suggest the idea of many making the whole; of solidarity. it points to an irony as the political act of Mandela’s incarceration cemented his status as an icon of struggle, which helped ferment the groundswell of resistance, solidarity and uprising, bringing about political change and democracy.'—Marco Cianfanelli

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