A bout with the law: Marco Cianfanelli’s representation of Nelson Mandela in Shadow Boxing

Abstract

A sculpture that is more than five metres high and constructed from laser-cut painted steel, Marco Cianfanelli’s Shadow Boxing (2013) refers to a photograph taken by Drum photographer Bob Gosani in 1957 that shows a young Nelson Mandela sparring with Jerry Moloi, a boxing champion. Placed outside the Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg, where a young Mandela defended his clients, Shadow Boxing is also just opposite Chancellor House, where Mandela and fellow activist Oliver Tambo had their law offices between 1952 and 1960. Functioning together with the space, Shadow Boxing invokes a sense of Mandela’s experiences in the 1950s while simultaneously encouraging insights and reflections about the ways in which apartheid histories have had impact on the present. Inviting a metaphorical reading of Mandela’s engagement with the law by being placed outside the Magistrates’ Courts as well as his own law offices, Shadow Boxing, it is suggested, also encourages associative interpretations through its formal and material properties. It is argued that, while it depicts a well-known individual on a large scale, Shadow Boxing encourages a more participative and mnemonic engagement than is usual in public statuary.