To Build a Home was created inside an abandoned house using whatever materials I had available: red lipstick, mascara, liquid eyeliner, and crayon. There was no elaborate plan for the work. I had thirty minutes, a friend willing to become the canvas, and an environment that already felt temporary and unsettled.
I drew a heart across his back, but the body refused to behave like paper. Every movement stretched, folded, and distorted the image. There was no fixed version of the drawing; even immediately after making a mark, it could change. Instead of trying to control that, the movement became part of the work.
That impermanence felt especially fitting within an abandoned house, a place once built to contain people's lives, now emptied of them. The body, the drawing, and the building were all changing in different ways. The heart became the constant idea between them: not something physically untouched, but something capable of changing shape without losing what it represented.
Photography: Nisha Khater
Model: Charl Fourie
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