2011
Lettering: Rosewood, Jacaranda, Zebrano, Kiaat, Sapele Mahogany, American Walnut and Imbuia.
Base: Meranti
Dimensions vary as the work is rearranged
Anagram
With SAU AUS USA (ANAGRAM), Willem Boshoff turns his attention to European antipathy towards the United States. He references Hansjörg Mayer's concrete grid poem of 1965, “sau/aus/usa”. The words in German for ‘sow’(sau) and ‘out’(aus) are made up of the same letters in varying sequence, suggesting that the meaning of the words may also shift.
Significantly, the artist first encountered Mayer’s poem as graffiti on a bridge in Switzerland several years before this work was realised.