becoming a self in history, becoming a self in my street
Michael Chase
When I was fifteen years old, I was sent to a criminal juvenile institution for
possessing drugs while being out of school and under age in South Africa.
After having been there
for a term, I ran away while being escorted by a guard to a holiday camp. As I was being chased by station
guards, I made my way to a nearby dual carriageway where I hid in a ditch. I thought I was safe and free. As I
lay there, I began to feel that rather than being safe I was actually in an abyss, a place of abandonment and
isolation both inwardly and outwardly. In that dark place I realized I had a choice to make: to stay there and
keep running or to go back to my prison on my own terms. I chose to go back and I recommitted myself to the
institution. From that moment I began to draw. I drew faces, faces with every possible expression, the myriad
selves of my soul life, both creative and destructive. This was the beginning of my journey to my present work
as a mask practitioner. I walked back to my prison in order to learn that freedom was an inner quality, and that
it is not about doing what you like but doing what you really wish to do. I didn’t want to wreck my body with
drugs or risk my life on the edge and I needed to get hold of my own inner world, to be the director of my soul,
rather than driven by it. It is this process that is now the central theme of my own work with masks.