Leon Bota is one of the most famous and long-lived patients with progeria, a South African musician, photographer, designer and artist, who lived to be 26 years old.
Progeria is a premature aging syndrome, a rare genetic defect. About 350 cases of progeria have been recorded on the planet, and usually patients do not live up to 20 years. Leon Botha lived for 26 years and left behind the world wonderful paintings and wonderful music.
Biography
Leon was born in Cape Town in the summer of 1985. At the age of four, the son of Bot's spouses was given a terrible diagnosis: progeria. Parents did everything possible to make life easier for their baby, fought with many diseases and abnormalities caused by progeria.
Receiving the usual school education for all children, Leon discovered a desire for creativity and spent two years studying painting and jewelry design at the Tigerberg Art Center. After graduation, he began working as a private artist, performing custom work.
In 2005, Leon underwent a complex heart bypass surgery to prevent a heart attack due to atherosclerosis caused by progeria. At the same time, he was seriously carried away by folk music and its modern version - hip-hop.
Creative career
At the beginning of 2007, in Durbanville, the first exhibition of Leon Bota's artworks was held, dedicated to hip-hop culture and organized by the famous South Africa Mr. Fat (stage name Ashley Titus), a rapper and public figure. Unfortunately, in the same year, Fat passed away, but attention was given to a young talent with an unusual appearance.
The second solo exhibition of the artist opened in 2009. In addition to fine art, Botha was engaged in photography and DJing, worked closely with the famous South African music team Die Antwoord, starred in their videos, wrote his own tracks.
And in 2010, Leon held a photo exhibition entitled "Who am I?" In a variety of portraits of himself, he tried to show people that a person, first of all, is a spiritual being, and the shape of the body is only a temporary state that is not related to the person, which can be very deep, despite all the external flaws. And the artist succeeded - the whole world started talking about him.
In addition, it was the difficult fate of the gifted young man with a strange appearance and his amazing paintings that inspired the famous Polish composer Marcin Stanczyk to create the one-act opera Solarize.
