The Butcher Boys Summary

The Butcher Boys (1985-1986) is a sculptural installation of three half-human creatures sitting in a row made out of plaster, oil paint, animal bones, horn and wood and the three figures sits heavily on a wooden bench as can be seen in figure 1.

These figures sometimes called humanoids or hominids, are made using body casts and have deep and open wounds of flesh peeled back at their spines which exposes the vertebra bones. The Butcher Boys’ (Figure 1) personalities can be seen through their posture, one leans back nervously while the second one leans in aggressively and the third one is the most frightful, sitting cross-legged and looking bored at the whole situation as if it is normal. They are deformed human bodies with lumps of flesh hanging sluggish between their legs as seen on figure 1, which

By taking away their speech it symbolizes how the oppressed did not have freedom of speech and it also dehumanize them yet again.

The injured and contorted figures disturbs the state of the human body and their right to having all that is necessary. The pain and distress of the nation is represented by the violated human body filled with open wounds and bones showing. They gradually but firmly establish a kind of animalistic reversion in the viewers, which makes the figures repulsive to look at. One more subtle point Jane Alexander made was that the state and those who condoned it were cowards.

It is no secret that South African artists have been using the image of the human body in extreme anxiety or pain to view the inhumane conditions in their society for a long time.

In the 1960’s during the Apartheid era disfigured, broken and otherwise abused bodies was an ordinary sight due to violent actions of the police towards black