Paul Stopforth is a white South African artist that now lives in the United States.
His politically charged work was suppressed in his native country by the apartheid government and he left for the United States in 1988.
[1] In 1981 and 1983 Stopforth made two large drawings titled "Elegy" and "Interrogation Space #1-5" about Steve Biko, South African Black Consciousness Movement leader who died in 1977 from head while in police custody.
Following Biko's death images of his autopsy images of his body were widely circulated, further dehumanizing and transforming Biko into a vessel of bare life (in Agamben's use of the term, a body that represents a base level of life outside of civilization, one who has been stripped of all social worth and can be killed without repercussions).
Especially Stopforth's drawings "Elegy" re-humanizes and transforms Biko into a martyr for the anti-apartheid movement.