Cape Town - “I think the general Afrikaans person is ready to drop his Calvinist waistcoat and be more relaxed about his sexuality,” says illustrator Marna Schoeman, who has helped illustrate Afrikamasutra, an Afrikaans translation of the ancient Kama Sutra on sex positions.
Schoeman illustrated the celebrated text together with South African artists Diek Grobler and Hardus Koekemoer.
The book, the brainchild of Ilse Groenewald, who also translated it, will be launched on Thursday at the Trent Gallery in Pretoria.
One of Schoeman’s illustrations shows an Afrikaans man wearing two-toned shorts and with a comb over, sitting next to a suburban swimming pool. Next to him are five women in stages of undress.
The man, she said, was liberating himself from traditional Afrikaner maleness.
“I needed to show what was around me, and I live in the suburbs,” said Schoeman, from Pretoria, who became involved in the project after being introduced to Groenewald in 2010.
“I decided I am going to take my heart in my hands and be explicit like the original text,” says Schoeman.
She says the reaction to her illustrations – some of which show nude women – has been largely positive so far.
The original Kama Sutra was written in India in Sanskrit in about 400 BC with detailed instructions on sex positions. Illustrations of the sex positions were added to later editions. - Cape Times
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