I have discovered, in my 7 year journey to present the Niemand Collection to you, the audience I have not yet met, that my motivation, my narrative, my description of myself and my journey, of my "why", is a fluid, dynamic experience. I have discovered that, as time passes, and as I delve deeper into the creative process, deeper into myself, that my reasons for Niemand, continue to expand. For this reason, I present my statement to you as a time line, written at various points throughout the past 7 years. Ever expanding. All valid. It is long, and well written. Take your time, I think it's worth it.
Artist Statement (Durban, South Africa 24 October 2021)
I grew up on the building sites that my father worked on, and in his workshop that he seldom allowed me into. He was a private man, and his seclusion captured me. He created alone. On humid summer evenings in Glen Anil, as Apartheid lumbered towards its end, my father, smoking forbidden cigarettes, would tinker, build, design, draw. Alone in his workshop. His solitude, his silence and his ability, combined to form a very strong impression, in my mind, of what an artist looked like. These early years in the suburbs, to the north west of Durban, set the stage for what would become a lifetime of decoding my creative identity. The first part of my identity solidified early on.
I longed for my adventure, a solo quest, unmatched I hoped.
For the destiny of lonely fate, dictates a single path.
And so alone I stepped aboard the bird of paradise.
I create alone.
As my father navigated life as a closet-oil-painter, of considerable talent, he told me one balmy afternoon that I would never be an artist until I could draw a cow. For the next 20 years, this equation of cow = artist, replayed itself in my mind. I built and shaped, but never drew. I was intimidated by that image of a cow that my father had presented to me as a boy. As the years passed, my father fell victim to those illicit cigarettes, and my reverence for the mantle of artist faded. I found myself building a career in the design industry, leading a variety of well paid, high profile, creative projects around the world. Production Designer, Art Director, Creative Director, Corporate Art Designer, Director, Producer, Writer. So many titles. Creative was my language, my meditation, my revenue. I was drifting. I was lost.
Through this all, I never mastered that cow. It remained a gap in my non-existent portfolio. After 20 years of designing and building, at the highest levels, documenting very little, publicising even less, I was asked to present my portfolio for a visa application. At the time I wasn’t sure I had enough material to create one. When I submitted the application, I had three unique portfolios, compiled of materials collected from friends and colleagues from around the world. I was surprised, not only by the volume of work that I had completed, but more strikingly by the fact that I still did not consider myself an artist. This mantle seemed lost to me. It was in this moment, that I knew that it was time to express myself, on my own terms, despite the cow. To investigate a solo contribution. To decode the mantle, sans cow. I began finalising designs for the Niemand Collection.
For the next five years, I bounced between South Africa and Los Angeles, working by day as a fabricator, and by night and every weekend, as an artist, a solo contributor. Late into the nights, I would hammer and weld, grind and polish. I had almost no money, and the little that I had was dedicated to completing Niemand. I lived on simple food, and slept on the workshop floor, on packing blankets, with a flask of tea and a Bluetooth speaker beside me. I slept on construction sites, in derelict buildings, on couches, in trucks and vans. I always felt wealthy with my flask and speaker beside me. They were home.
Living on the periphery of Los Angeles, I slid into the shadows of this crowded, lonely city. I had no space for community, although I longed for it. I flirted with the outsiders, the minorities, the foreigners. I flirted with the geriatric homosexuals of Mid-City, the beach bums of Santa Monica, the van-lifers of Eagle Rock, the Ethiopians of Fairfax, the vaquero of Sunland. Glancing encounters with an incredible tapestry of humanity, bottle-necked in this sprawling, smoky city. I met a few amazing people during these years, mainly foreign. They offered me their homes, hot meals, a sense of belonging. They hired me to fix fences, translate books, and tutor children. They helped drive Niemand forward. They helped drive me forward.
The arc of my solo contribution, of my expedition into the realm of the artist, despite the cow, was unpredictable, productive, fascinating, familiar. I was captivated by the process, unsure of the goal, but ultimately engaged and happy. It all felt right. And then Covid hit. In March 2020, South Africa locked down, the borders closed and I was unable to return to the US, to complete Niemand. As if in a dream, with what felt like war approaching, the course of my life was changed by a profound moment. Difficult to explain, perhaps best described as a deep sense of knowing, I’m not sure. I found myself compelled to act, to face this enemy, head on. I started feeding the hungry in South Africa, and inadvertently created a social justice movement, Ubuntu Army. With the support of around 8000 people, globally, Ubuntu Army fed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable South Africans. An ethereal, surreal experience, I let Niemand go, immersed in a new sense of deep purpose.
By October 2020, after 6 months on the frontline of desperation, and with Ubuntu Army operating as an effective, independent organisation, I decided to return to Los Angeles to complete Niemand. A gruelling and extremely challenging experience. With no design or fabrication work available, and with four key pieces of the collection incomplete, I retreated to the San Gabriel mountains, and used the little money I had left to build an off-grid cabin next to a small river. It was from this humble base that I launched the final assault on the collection. I spent 7 intense months, through a harsh winter and extremely lonely lockdown, living alone, working alone, completing the collection. A dark and exhilarating chapter, I cried often for my sons. I create alone.
As I completed Niemand, my future in the design industry shifted over a spring lunch meeting at a neighbourhood Mexican restaurant in east LA. As I stood at the crossroads, presented by that meeting, with industry sitting comfortably to the left, and independence to the right, I veered right. In that moment, the pieces in the Niemand Collection featured here, and built over the previous five years, suddenly became all that I had. Niemand was to be my revenue. But, there was something more. I silently repeated the words to myself, as I sat at my table, “all I have is my art”. I have my art. Wait a minute! My art. I had always had my art. I thought back to my three portfolios, to all the pieces I had designed and built over the years, spread around the globe, in museums, galleries, corporate headquarters, retail stores. I thought about my lack of attachment to these pieces. My lack of concern at their critique, or their press. The pieces themselves were unimportant. Niemand was irrelevant. It wasn’t the image of the cow, that mattered, it was the process of its birth. Its gestation. The cow was a myth. I had immersed myself in the process of creating, in various forms, for over 40 years. I had been a practicing artist for 40 years, who had been distracted by the mirage of a cow, an imaginary image, an illusion.
In truth, most of the pieces in the Niemand Collection, have been developed over decades, in a process of design, re-design, counter-design. Very old Ideas moving slowly towards the workshop floor. A slow gestation in line and form. Their fabrication has taken weeks, months, years. Never days. I have bled, and cried and laughed and danced in my workshop. I have apologised to my sons for my absence. Delayed by Covid, coup and flood, the birth of Niemand, on every level, is long overdue. Now that it is here, I am heading back into the cerebral world of design, re-design, counter-design. There are new pieces knocking. New materials. New environments. Working titles: Airheads, Exposure, Radiation, Arrows. I have cows to birth.
I am Clint McLean. I am an artist. I have always been one. I present the Niemand Collection. I will be presenting future collections. I may or may not build these pieces again. I hope you like my work, although to be honest it doesn’t really matter, as I am dedicated, captured, enamoured by this process of creating, by the adventure. I will continue to create, for that is all there is. I hope you buy these pieces, although that also doesn’t really matter, as I am an artist, of considerable talent, who will create and live well, regardless.
Niemand (Zavora, Mozambique 18 June 2024)
“Niemand” means “nobody” in Afrikaans.
Smothered in early abandonment, I ceased early.
No sense of my self. No sense of me, I never existed.
Niemand.
In-stead, stood compulsion, a salve for a fragmented mind.
And
In the shadow of a giant brother-cousin, the last steps out of sight were taken.
To the place where compulsion itself has no ground beneath its injury.
“Slegs Blankes” means “Whites Only” in Afrikaans.
Fragrant neighbors in the afternoon, nothing, nobody in the morning.
Go-karts in the afternoon, nothing, nobody in the morning.
Niemand.
We weren’t allowed to live next to each other.
Embossed on public benches, “Slegs Blankes” defined our separation at a furniture level.
We weren’t allowed to sit next to each other either.
How very strange.
Niemand
In the loam of this fragmented country, in the moist loam of apartheid, abandonment merged with the separation, and disconnection grew.
Strong.
To become the hammer with which the Collection was forged.
Created in the dark.
For no reason.
For every motherfucking reason.
Niemand was.
It was.
Just.
Before narrative. Before reason. The Collection stood alone.
Niemand provided shelter.
Camouflage.
Niemand provided anonymity.
The Collection belonged to nobody.
Niemand.
I could skip my self, I could skip me.
i could skip ownership.
The Collection would speak where I wouldn’t.
Niemand mitigated the risk, the getting it wrong, the abandonment, the beginning.
I could skip the beginning.
Niemand.
A justification.
From the shame of not owning up. A good excuse.
A justification.
All shapes already have owners.
All shapes.
We borrow. We bend. We alter. We own.
Yet we do not own the shapes.
Or the colours.
Or the textures.
Or the lines.
We borrow them.
We join them together.
We alter them.
Some own them, I choose not.
Nobody owns them.
Niemand.
“Ubuntu” means “I am because we are” in isiZulu.
In the loam of this fragmented country, in the moist loam of failure, heart merged with the separation, and connection grew.
Strong.
To guide the hammer with which the Collection was forged.
Ubuntu.
Created in the dark.
For many reasons.
Niemand was.
It was.
Here.
In process, an arc.
Light-er.
Perhaps a self, perhaps me.
Perhaps not.
It doesn’t matter.
The truth. Today, perhaps tomorrow.
Disconnection drove the hammer that forged the Collection.
The hammer fell. Again. And again.
115000 times, In search, the hammer fell.
Cradled by the anvil, by the heat. Cradled by the seperation.
Connection was forged.
Connection became the guide to the hammer.
Connection became my self, became me.
Iemand.
“Iemand” means “somebody” in Afrikaan
Ubuntu19: Art and the Army (Los Angeles, United States 1 July 2024)
It was into Matikwe that I first drove in the middle of April 2020, with a pick-up truck full of cabbages. This marked the beginning of something very peculiar. Of something incredibly beautiful. Of something that nearly broke me many times. This delivery of cabbages marked the beginning of Ubuntu Army. Ubuntu Army began as a truck of cabbages and a Facebook post about the delivery of those cabbages. A simple act that would have an incredible impact on my life, and on the lives of the many thousands who would join me.
The mandated social distancing that was enforced throughout South Africa, and around the globe, did not reach the townships or shanty towns of South Africa. The practice of social distancing did not reach Matikwe, a very poor township to the west of Durban. Poverty does not allow for the luxury of isolation. The danger of epidemic, apparent to the rest of South Africa, and the world, in these under-regulated, under-resourced areas, was likely to be high. As was the expected death toll. Very high.
But, it was hunger that reached the townships first, long before the first wave of Covid really took its toll.
Covid and the lockdowns affected us all. Differently. In my case, I felt compelled to act, to fight. Not due to my heroic virtue, but due to my inability to wait for danger to reveal itself. I am not patient. I don’t like the unknown. I don’t like waiting. I confront the unknown head-on. To get it out of the way. With what felt like war approaching, I charged towards the virus that had reached our shores. Deep into the unknown, deep into Matikwe, I charged, on that warm autumn day in 2020, to deliver cabbages to a community in need.
I spent weeks in Matikwe, but with hunger spreading rapidly across the country, I ventured past Matikwe, deeper into the unknown, deeper into the Inanda Valley. To see how bad it really was. An ethereal experience, I spent the next 6 months delivering food to thousands of starving Durbanites in the valley. As I began to create a foothold in the valley, forcing the hunger to retreat in certain areas, I was called into downtown Durban, into the notorious Point Road area to create food stability for 36 000 stranded and hungry African refugees.
The experience in Point Road is beyond explanation. A study in terror, control, violence, addiction, love, corruption, miracle, resignation, death, I was humbled and broken, repeatedly, by the dynamics of this misunderstood community. Working amongst the refugees on the Point, a close knit, deeply religious, and superstitious community, I became known as the Messiah of the Point, a mantle that was both tragic, and at times, very funny. A story for another day, In my six months on the Point, I managed to create food stability for that beautiful community, despite the corruption, the interference and the constant threat.
In that first year of lockdown, I fed over 200 000 Africans. During times of crisis we give. Unreservedly. Ubuntu.
From downtown Durban, we went national. With the help of social media savvy Ubuntu Army members, we created a digital platform that connected those able to help, with those needing help. Direct connection. “We are Ubuntu Army, please don’t send us your money. Keep it, and connect directly” read the welcome message on our home page. A team of moderators joined me to administer the platform, as did other men with trucks, all dedicated to delivering food to the hungry. It worked incredibly well. It was beautiful.
It was around this time, towards the end of 2020, that I returned to Los Angeles to mount the final assault on the Niemand Collection. With Ubuntu Army operating as an independent organisation, I felt that there was space available to complete what I had started. I spent the next 7 months in east LA, completing the build of the collection, directing the Ubuntu Army teams on the ground, and online, and writing about Ubuntu in an attempt to motivate and inspire continued support for our efforts in the townships around Durban. It was exhausting, and I returned to Durban in May 2021, in need of rest.
By mid-2021, hunger’s grip on South Africa’s vulnerable began to loosen, and peace began to return to Durban, and to my life. This was short lived. In July 2021, widespread rioting and looting, caused by the growing frustration and poverty, driven by the lockdowns, spread throughout Durban. A coup of sorts, the violence interrupted supply chains, destroyed businesses and claimed over 130000 jobs. A familiar desperation returned to Durban, and I once more drove into the unknown, with trucks of food for starving South Africans.
As the violence subsided, and that unnerving sense of peace returned to our lives, a devastating flood hit the Inanda Valley in April 2022. This was by far the greatest challenge we had faced. The scale of the devastation and the desperation was overwhelming at times, but with a team of Ubuntu Army members, dedication, and the strategic use of technology, Ubuntu Army met the desperation, head-on. We served the displaced and homeless, the traumatized and orphaned, for 10 months, and only left the valley in February 2023, once the last of the displaced had been shepherded to safety.
Now, four years after I delivered that first truck of cabbages to the crumbling community room in Matikwe, Ubuntu Army stands as a recognised, registered and most importantly, trusted social justice organization. Ubuntu Army stands amongst the most vulnerable people on the planet. We stand, on the ground, in the mud, with the people suffering. We do not look away. We hold, we hug, we chat, we love, and we try very hard to motivate others to do the same, to help carry the burden. We tackle the suffering, head on.
Ubuntu Army provides a door to the suffering, through which those on the other side of the poverty line are able to enter. In person. UA advocates for connection across the socio-political-economic divides around the world. UA advocates for individuals to reach across their fear, to meet the people on the other side of the street, the other side of the river, on the other side of the poverty line, on the other side of the political aisle, on the other side of the racial spectrum. In fighting hunger, Ubuntu Army established a platform that allowed hundreds of thousands of previously separated individuals to meet each other. I love this.
Ubuntu Army advocates for direct, in person connection. The connection, and not the resource exchanged, is the secret to fighting poverty. We have shown that connection is at the core of solving poverty. Not fighting poverty, but solving poverty. Connection is at the core of unity. At the core of policy. At the core of healing. Connection is at the core of solving most, if not all, of the problems we face on this planet. And. Our findings have been validated by academics, social scientists and activists across the planet. We have unlocked a secret to our future, and we are committed to sharing it.
Poverty is not a lack of resource, it is a lack of connection, a lack of community. With community we can solve the issues of food, water and shelter, but without it, we have only politics and charity left, and neither solve anything.
Within this context, I guess that it is no surprise that, as an artist from Durban, I have created a body of work that advocates for connection. My search and advocacy for connection is rooted, I believe, in the disconnection I suffered during childhood, due to the apartheid laws that existed in SA at the time, and due to the fact that I suffered a great deal of abandonment as a young child. These traumas have shaped my life. Have shaped my whole being. When apartheid and abandonment meet, and disconnection envelopes you, the search for connection becomes the ball game. The whole nine-yards. Everything.
In my search for connection, two pillars of equal strength rose from within me. In my art, I have designed and built a collection of work that celebrates connection, that advocates for togetherness. I built the Niemand Collection, as a tribute to my humanity. To our humanity. As a tribute to our capacity and agency. In Ubuntu Army, I created an opportunity for myself, and for thousands of others to connect with each other. To once more see each other, through the haze of division, anxiety and tribalism. To discover purposes and engagement. To heal ourselves and others, by allowing compassion to be the guide.
Art and the Army are intertwined. The two represent me, they represent who I am. The search for connection is me. It is my whole purpose. It has solidified me. And it’s simple. It involves me, and you. It involves us, the individuals, the ordinary everyday people, reaching out, past the awkwardness of introductions, past our insecurity, past our fears, past all the static, to meet each other. It’s so simple.
I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain my search for connection as I began the fabrication of the Niemand Collection, or as I drove those cabbages into Bhambayi. I understand this now. It took time for my pain, and for the pain of my community, to reveal this to me. This in itself is beautiful. I have navigated a lifetime of pain. I have navigated disconnection. Otherness. Aloneness. Anxiety. I have navigated townships, poverty and unimaginable human suffering. A long arc of self discovery. An incredible journey that led me home.
At Ubuntu Army we build connections by building Ubuntu Links. Building an Ubuntu Link is the single most important act of kindness we will take in our lives. It is an act of strategic empathy, of matching love and action. It is a simple, uncomplicated act. It is an act of compassion, an act of connection, an act of community. It is an act that destroys division, directly fights poverty, and heals pain. It is an act that will save us, our society, our country, our humanity, and ultimately, this creaking planet of ours. It is an act of revolution. It is an act that lies at the core of the Compassion Revolution.
In the Niemand Collection, I advocate for social proximity, for connection, for humanity. I have created objects that allow you to share a seat with a stranger. With an-other. With the-other. It’s that simple. Please touch the art. Please take a seat in the art. With a stranger. And chat. This adds value to each piece, as the oils from your skin and the lint from your clothes, as your humanity and imperfection polish the steel. Please touch the art.
A long, but necessary preamble to establish the context in which I built Ubuntu19.
In building Ubuntu19 I have blended the two pillars that rose from within me. I built Ubuntu19 during an isolated Los Angeles winter. Locked down during a lonely December and January of 20/21, I completed the build of U19. A design that in truth had been shaped by a decades long search for a salve to the disconnection, the arrival of U19, as a defeated virus, advocating for connection during a time of unprecedented isolation and separation, seemed poignant and perfect. The timing of U19 is perfect.
Ubuntu19 is a husk, the dried-skeleton of the defeated virus. A virus that caused so much pain, U19 is a monument to our agency, our ingenuity, and our resilience. In the face of incredible challenge. In the face of the unknown, we rose, each in our own way. U19 is a monument to our personal and collective capacity. It is a monument to every person who lived through the pandemic. It is a monument to their pain, to their growth, to their survival. It is a monument to their own Matikwe.
Ubuntu19 advocates for social proximity, for social cohesion. It is diametrically opposed to social isolation, Covid related or otherwise. U19 is a monument to all those brave enough to look beyond their fears to a future where suffering is challenged, unity considered and personal capacity celebrated. Challenged. Considered. Celebrated. U19 is a monument to our humanity. It is a monument to connection. It is a monument to love. Please take a seat. Please touch the art.
Ubuntu19 is heavy. It is built from heavy duty, high quality, high schedule carbon pipe. On the inside, where you sit, it is polished, smooth, velvet, shiny. On the outside, U19 is stark, impersonal, industrial. The inside is treated, and with use, will remain polished. The outside is untreated, and over time will oxidize, and will develop surface rust. This contrast is essential. Over time, with use, through connection, the inner surface of U19 will remain vibrant, alive, inviting. Over the same time, the outside will deteriorate. The legacy of the virus, the disconnection, the isolation, the pain, will deteriorate and slowly leave us. The legacy of the virus will rust, the disconnection will rust.
In the husk of this defeated virus, a virus that caused us all so much pain, I invite you to share a seat with the-other, with an-other, with the stranger, and introduce yourself. I invite you to reach past your fear, your difference, your judgment, your separation, mandated and otherwise, I invite you to reach past yourself, to meet the other from whom you have always been separated. In the husk of this defeated virus, I invite you to connect. I invite you to keep the seat warm and shiny, a ringside seat from which I invite you to watch the virus leave, to watch the isolation rust away.
Blom (Los Angeles, United States 12 July 2024)
Blom means “Flower” in Afrikaans
I built Blom by hand. Every piece. That was always my intention. To go old school. To go back to the beginning. To go back to the original nature of things, or as close to it as possible, and to work from there. Blom is an exercise in the old, an exploration of heritage, of forgotten skills and practice. Blom is a study of muscle and grit, of anvil and hammer, of fire and ash, applied to modern perception, modern sensibility, modern need. Two sets of expectations, colliding, within a forged sphere. Blom is old school.
The rings from which Blom are built were rolled cold. No heat or machine, just muscle and guile. The rings were forged in a coal fire, beaten flat and textured on the anvil, by hand, with a hammer. 115000 blows. The rings were joined with 6000 layered welds, applied internally, each polished twice, to create the velvet inner surface of Blom. 93 days of polishing. Every ring is unique, and impossible to replicate. Old school, and compulsion. A tool from the beginning, from my beginning. A tool forged in abandonment.
Blom tested me physically. I bled often. I burnt often.
Hospital Visits - 4
Surgeries - 2
Lacerations (Unknown)
Burns (Unknown)
Blom tested me mentally. To the edge. The unending hammering, welding, polishing. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Days. Months. Years. 2.5 years. An exercise in futility. An exercise in endurance. Blom made me suffer. Right to the edge of breaking. This I didn’t expect. I knew the build would be tough, but this tough, I didn’t expect. Removing machines demands an elevated level of physical capacity. I expected this. I was prepared for this. But as the imperfection, the depth, the texture of the rings, were revealed, I realized that I wasn’t in any way ready for what lay ahead. The design redefined itself.
There was no end, no answer. No clear line to aim at, despite my design, despite my plans. Throughout the build I followed the hammer. I followed the texture. For a year, I followed the imperfection. There was always more. How would this end? How would this stop? I never found those answers. Yet, throughout, I felt the need to go deeper. To test my practice, my capacity, my tolerance. To test the steel. To allow it to speak. To listen to its secrets, its stories. To parent the imperfection. Unconditional acceptance, I grew to love the imperfection.
For now, Blom seems complete.
Blom is rare. A balance of the industrial and organic, at times, as she spins, Blom seems not to belong here. By here, I mean on earth. She is other. From another place. Other worldly. Blom is an exercise in acceptance. In expectation. In imperfection. In boundaries. In texture. In madness. Blom taught me balance in the most brutal way. She was the hardest mistress. Hard as nails. Hard as forget steel, velvet to the touch. Blom taught me to bend, to breathe. Blom taught me to listen.
I have walked alone for dusty miles,
on lonely plains and dry dark hills.
Vast and still, this cracked land,
my destined solitude?
But then a flash,
a frozen moment of light.
A moist breath on my neck
A splash in the dust, and then another.
A storm of a girl, dancing in the sky.
Alive,
a flower pushing through the dirt, reaching.
I bend.
I breathe
I soar
My storm of a girl.
At last, the rain has come!