Bitterkomix: Sketchbook and Journals 1991-2025

Bitterkomix: Sketchbook and Journals contains hundreds of images from the sketchbooks of the creative, confrontational duo – Conrad Botes and Anton Kannemeyer – behind Bitterkomix, stretching back through many years of satirical takes on power, race, religion and, perhaps of special relevance today, censorship both state and societal. As the artists point out, time changes how their art is read, and while this might be a deleterious experience for them personally, it is also a compliment to the power of their art. Three images in the book serve to tell this story. The first, Generation Z zombies stumbling around, mumbling ‘We want censorship’ and ‘My feelings are hurt’. The second, a crying man (Anton Kannemeyer), about to shoot himself in the head, saying ‘I’m on the wrong side of history.’ The third is an image of Donald Trump saying, ‘Everything woke turns to shit!’, with commentary in the margins: ‘Unfortunately true in the arts… woke art is shit.’ How you read this book is to some extent going to depend on how you understand the narrative suggested by these images. There has been a censoring backlash by those who find Bitterkomix offensive. The satire of Botes and Kannemeyer worked because it challenged and ridiculed the oppressive mores of the day – and it’s still doing that, with a new type of awareness (only the intellectually lazy will use the shorthand ‘woke’) as the target. But you, the reader, will have to decide exactly what you see here.