2011 Who’s Afraid

In Who’s Afraid a female dancer confronts a tuatara (a New Zealand reptile sometimes referred to as a “living dinosaur”). This is a sculpture with a high sense of the dramatic, the artwork contrasting the agility of youth with a pre-historic animal.

This work sits within a series that was first aired in an exhibition called “The Dance” in 2010. It was a playful menagerie of dancers, acrobats, birds and other animals. This reflection on the triumph of youth, of age and on time passing may have been precipitated by the death of a fellow student who had graduated with Dibble from art school.

Who’s Afraid, enacting an impossible dialogue between a tuatara and a dancer, is a standoff that is both dramatic and absurd. There is a nervous tension between the two and it is ambiguous as to who is the performer and who is the audience. This confrontation mirrors the life of an artist - whether a visual artist or performer.

The work was commissioned by the Palmerston North Public Sculpture Trust and is aptly suited for display outside the city’s performing arts theatre.