de Arte, Volume 57 (3): Untold Stories: Material Narratives of Fragility, Grief, and Healing

Podcast with Christa Swanepoel from David Krut Projects

Online Webinar and discussion with Leshoka Joe Legate from LL Editions

35th Annual SAVAH Conference, October 2022, Online

I was invited to make a work in response to the department of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State’s previous HOD Mr Ben Botma’s oeuvre. The work I created was the Stone Lithograph Groundwork.

My Stone Lithograph Groundwork was selected for this group exhibition which was an initiative through the collective I am a member of, The Printing Girls.

In Groundwork I investigate a derelict landscape captured in a tour bus around the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. The presence of the pyramids in the distance, along with a sphinx has been omitted, but the rows of graves are suggested on the horizon. The focus is the scene of discarded pieces of wooden structures, and a suggestion of a sort of stage in the centre. This scene is suggested of a ruined and discarded environment, however, in my view, these landscapes often reflect stages and moments in our own lives. And even though the foundation can be informal, hand-made, and somewhat destroyed, it can still be the groundwork and foundation lain to build from.

My work ver weg – hier voor: Screening Presence was selected to form part of a group exhibition by The Printing Girls collective at the David Krut Projects’ THE BLUE HOUSE in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I was invited to participate as a collaborating artist in an exhibition component of the international creative writing project titled De Schrijverswef. As an invited visual artist I collaborated with and responded to the prose by the artist Sien Volders titled Voor een kind, ver weg.

The large-scale stone lithograph investigates the complexities of ongoing relationships over time, especially if the parties are separated by time and space.

In the work, I explore loss and absence, and how technology can step in attempting to digitally carry, project and conjure the voice and/or image of the absentee. In our attempts to use technology to bring forth those who are not present, the experience may still be felt as incomplete or just shy of enough. There is a longing in the work, a reaching for breath and a feeling of ‘being here’. The open sky suggesting the ephemeral quality that incomplete experiences and absence may conjure when attempting to reach out and connect via radio waves.

As a member of the Printing Girls, I had the opportunity to put some of my lithographic works forward to be exhibited in Sweden. My Stone Lithograph Ephemeral Cast, along with a few other lithographs, were selected and exhibited at the symposium in Sweden.

Ephemeral Cast explores impermanence and its illusive nature. Something impermanent such as a shadow being cast is ephemeral, however, its existence cannot be denied. Permanent structures and its meaning impose such a visceral presence in a site, while its past and present may dance and move like shadows on its surface. The stone used to print is implied in the stone of the structure to the right. The absolute existence of hard, long-standing structures compared and drawn equal to shadows casting on the imaginary landscape, comparative to the image created and subsequently erased on said stone.

I created a small copper etch for this exhibition, which was selected to form part of the Group Show at Gallery 2 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

oblation is more of a playful work in which I investigate the printmaking studio, and our dependence and reliance on it as a space of thinking, working, moving, suffering and healing. An oblation is usually a thing that is presented or offered to a god, in this case the precious measuring beakers to the printmaking studio.

I represented the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State as the internal curator from UFS and participating artist at the Winter Lab II Winter Exibition titled Good Neighbours which was hosted by the internationally acclaimed NIROX Sculpture Park in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. I acted as the internal curator, presenting the UFS cohort of artists’ work under the theme Fluid Imaginaries and participated as an artist myself with the installation piece titled dogma.

In this exhibition, each artist discovered a conceptual underpinning for their work from the innate tendency of humans to construct systems – and to then playfully engage with and confront it. The title of this exhibition, Fluid Imaginaries, is drawn from the uniquely fluid characteristics of the playful and creative imagination and its ability to flow through, from, over, into and to overwhelm previous and sometimes perceived constructs of space and site. The selected works in this exhibition each investigates how the intangible and ephemeral space that is an interaction, conversation, confrontation, or authentic experience, is negotiated in the neighbourhood of human playing. Humans have been in and at play since prehistoric times. It is in the past and present neighbourhoods of cultures where humans have negotiated and constructed the social, and personal systems and techniques we engage with.

Mine Kleynhans’ work Abacus for Emotional Transactions (relic from a suburban fantasy) is the springboard of this interrogation of systems of credence and exchange. A reflection on this interactive work leads to a further exploration into neighbouring relationships that are often negotiated through so called terms of engagement.

These works intimately confront and investigate disparate experiences in our dwelling of being. Pre-existing and contested systems are questioned and confronted by Bontle Tau, while traumatic exchanges are investigated by Adelheid von Maltitz. Janine Allen (The brusher) provokes systems of exchange in academic thought and scholarship, while Lyrene Kühn-Botma challenges the authority of pre-existing and inherited dogmas of belief. Johandi du Plessis-Kleynhans investigates the exchange in sites of dwelling, while Leon Witthuhn discovers, through statistic analysis and physical interactivity, a mutual beneficial relationship between humans who are often and habitually separated.

Fluidity is intrinsically connected to shapeshifting and the changing quality is central to this specific group of curated works dealing with neighbouring relationships. Viewers are confronted with the pain and flaws in the previous and current proximities in life and of being human. We are confronted to question human interaction and the rationalisation of the systems we willingly and unwillingly engage in. As a result, the selected artists' conceptual approaches can be interpreted as small acts of erasure, or soft knockings or tapping on structures that were previously perceived as unchangeable and static, to get to the point to subvert, re-negotiate, recombine, or topple such elements.

The broken stone tablet evokes historical and theological references to imperative texts upon which societies, beliefs, and cultures are based. These dogma’s and systems set out by generations of peoples live only in the space where it is practiced, existing as ideas and ideals. Ideals, such as being kind to one’s neighbour, fairness, and justice is, essentially, intangible concepts. The fragility of these belief structures and systems upon which lives, and society is based and governed sits as an ephemeral image upon the limestone. This astonishingly fragile drawing is juxtaposed with the tactility of the ancient stone. Borders can be seen as artificial splits in landscape and society – similar to the split stone. Borders are artificial demarcations imposed by theoretical, intangible concepts of society, order and imposed western colonial thinking. Dogmas are imposed onto one another, informed, and driven by demarcations made on the earth, these boundaries fuel different impressions such as suspicion, and more. This work aims to invite the viewer to engage with the fading image on the stone, encouraging the slight erasure of these suggested systems, to once more as a community and neighbours redraw new thoughts and impressions engaging in discourse with one another.

I was invited to participate in this fascinating and relevant exhibition with the digital work Quick Response and the drawings Semblance. The exhibition has an online as well as physical/ real world/ face to face component. Explained by the curators below:

It has been more than a year since the Covid-19 pandemic has permanently altered most sectors of South African society by forcing a rapid migration into virtual spaces. This is also true for art, which is experienced through gallery websites, virtual exhibitions, online art fairs, online art festivals and social media. Interfaces provide intersections – meeting places – between artists, users, technologies and audiences. They provide seemingly boundless accessibility but are far from transparent. The Interface Exhibition brings together a selection of artists that grapple with the concept of ‘interfacing’ as a meeting point – or arguably, in some understandings, an absence of ‘meeting’ – and changing relationships to sociality, the experience of art and embodiment.

Interface Exhibition is brought to you by the University of the Free State Art Gallery. It will be accompanied by a physical exhibition in 2022 that will further interrogate the exchange and contradiction between these spaces that are ‘inter’.

Curated by Miné Kleynhans and Teboho Mokhothu

Interfacing with the deceased and interfacing with moments of grieving is becoming increasingly digital. The flat surface of the screen can house within it the world of mourning, the funerary chant, and the image of the deceased. Previously, one may have experienced the moving images of the deceased through dreams and visions. A magical moment which can now be recreated inside a lit screen. Digitally, one can actively revisit sites where the deceased has been reconstructed as a virtual avatar, or one can actively visit various virtual sites of play by sitting in front of the screen. Still, imagery of the deceased cannot be separated from the digital mode of display. It is only via the medium of the computer and handheld device that the deceased can be presented as a moving, speaking image. A contradicting site, as the bereaved is so close to the moving body of the deceased, however, nothing is tangible except for the cold smooth screen that houses their image. It is through the tangible experience of touching the smooth screen displaying a moving image of the deceased that the bereaved may experience an ephemeral moment of melancholy.

The works in this exhibition aim to make the viewer pertinently aware of their own bodies in relation to the screen they are interfacing with. The hands gesturing in the Semblance series of drawing make us aware of automatic gestures while scrolling and interacting with your digital devices. While the vast foreboding landscape in the work Quick Response make us aware of the layers of undiscernible data in our everyday vision. Inviting us to ‘scan’, move closer, and decipher.

Group exhibition in the Scaena Foyer at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa as part of the Visual Arts programme at the Vrystaat Arts Festival.

Group Exhibition at Gallery 2 in Johannesburg, South Africa

Nexus, was a Transnational Exposition initiative which formed part of the Vrynge Visual Arts Programme, a component to the Vrystaat Arts Festival which takes place annually in Bloemfontein in the Free State, South Africa. The VRYNGE Visual Arts Programme creates a platform for existing, upcoming, developing and experimental art projects. Nexus was such an experimental project which was on exhibition in both South Africa, as well as the United Kingdom. Five South African Artists participated along with five Artists from the United Kingdom. The work created was digital, working with the concept of how far reaching individuals are connected by degrees of separation. Artists were invited to, more broadly, work with the theme of ‘connection’. The Nexus exposition invited a multitude of artforms to participate such as the spoken word, performance and song. During the exhibition period any other creative or individuals were invited to perform in the exhibition space and respond to the printed works and theme.

Invited to take part in group exhibition at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, south Africa

Group Exhibition at the Microbiology Department, University of the Free State, South Africa Artwork: Faux. Two pigment ink drawings with silkscreen on Fabriano. 60x45 cm (each)

VROST, or Free State Open Studio Tour (Vrystaat Oop Studio Toer), was an initiative which formed part of the Vrynge Visual Arts Programme, a component to the Vrystaat Arts Festival which takes place annually in Bloemfontein in the Free State, South Africa. The VRYNGE Visual Arts Programme creates a platform for existing, upcoming, developing and experimental art projects.VROST entails a tour through the art studios of various artists in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The studios were located at various tertiary campuses, the inner city and the suburbs of Bloemfontein. During the tour, viewers were able to experience what goes on behind the scenes in the creative process of conceptualising, experimenting and creating an artwork in various disciplines of art. The studio visits also granted direct access to artists to engage in conversation and procure artworks.