The World Design Capital (WDC) for 2014 is angry… and by that I mean the city of Cape Town is angry.

Yesterday we saw the defacing of a Mandela-inspired Ray-Ban art installation on the Sea Point promenade by a group that refers to themselves as ‘Tokolos’. This act has led to a statement from WDC.

According to Media Manager for WDC, Priscilla Urquhart:

The eyes of the world have been focused on Cape Town as the World Design Capital 2014 this year as we built a platform for social impact through design with the 460+ projects in the WDC 2014 programme. The artist’s work is part of ART54, one of the recognized WDC 2014 projects and is a City of Cape Town ward initiative piloted by former Ward 54 Councillor Beverley Schaeffer. ART54 has showcased various artists and their works in the past year along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Public art displays and installations play an important role in social cohesion and public debate. Michael Elion’s work has done that in a dynamic way. It has created conversation and debate, creative sparks and new audiences being exposed to public art.

The City of Cape Town does make a valid point, by saying that Michael Elion’s work stimulates public debate and social cohesion – it is just really unfortunate that public debate in this sense has been replaced by vandalism. Or maybe that’s what they thought they were doing?

More on ART54 here. 

For more info on WDC, check out the website.