Janus At Union Square East
This female depiction of the Roman god Janus by South African artist Lionel Smit is being exhibited at Unions Square. The statue is modeled after a woman of the muslim Cape Malay community in South Africa, earliest members of whom were enslaved in Southeast Asia and brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company. It represents the colonial past of South Africa and how it has merged into a new culture looking forward.
Janus is the god of the beginnings and endings, of duality and of portals who can see both into the past and into the future. Hence, Janus is usually depicted as having two faces. One looking to the past, the other to the future.
