Parrot Jungle is perhaps one of the most purely photographic of Lien Botha's many bodies of work, though of course she has exploited the medium since early works such as Memorabilia (1992) and Africana Collectanea (1994), as well as in recent works such as Amendment (2006). But here there are several differences, not least Botha's employment of a digital camera, which gives her a new flexibility that is reflected in the images. Confronted with what at first glance is a loose, fragmented narrative of sorts, one wonders three things about Parrot Jungle: why are these people, places and objects significant to the artist? What conceptual and aesthetic decisions has Botha made in order to come to the point of making and organising these images? And what, in the history of the medium with which she uncompromisingly throws in her lot here-without, that is, the insertion or addition of other materials or other kinds of non-photographic images-has opened a space for this body of work in its particular form?
The Unhistorical History of Lien Botha's Parrot Jungle By Bronwyn Law-Viljoen - Full Text