Robin Rhode (b. Cape Town, South Africa, 1976) is inspired by youth street culture and art history. In Rhode’s work, urban walls become his canvases, static images are put into motion, and the artist becomes a performer and street interventionist. In the dramatic video Piano Chair, a young man with a blackened face, elegantly dressed like a maestro, systematically attempts to destroy an animated drawing of a grand piano set against a stark white wall with cracked plaster. He first pelts the instrument with rocks, then attacks it with a machete and a hatchet, defacing it, and setting it on fire and hoisting it into the air with a noose in a hanging, before kicking away the chair. This ritualistic attempt to ‘murder’ the piano is accompanied by brief notes and chords. The piece references the extreme racial violence of life in South Africa, merging ideas of extreme refinement and brutality into a single jarring, and exceptionally effective work. Piano Chair was inspired by the South African jazz composer Moses Molelekwa, a rising star of South African jazz, who was tragically found hanged in 2001.