Artist Description
Artist notes:
This clay sculpture reflects my search for connection across people and cultures. In this piece I explore patterns and shapes derived from various South African cultures from Ndebele house-paintings to my grandmother's doilies.
My Afrikaans grandmother always had crocheted doilies in her house. Their geometric patterns contained elements of sacred geometry. I have always been fascinated with sacred geometry as a spiritual expression and this subject matter found a perfect fit in the air-drying clay medium that I use to create my 'light relief sculptures'. The challenge lay in pushing the medium to its very limits. This manifests in manipulating the clay to its thinnest possible thickness and using unusual sculpting tools such as toothpicks and needles to achieve a delicate paper-thin sculpture.
As a South African, I am deeply conscious of the cultural influences that shape my identity. The work draws on symbolic motifs and weaves together visual references from Ndebele, Zulu, Cape Dutch, Islamic, and Afrikaans cultures - including Ndebele house paintings, Zulu adornment, Islamic prayer mats, and the crocheted doilies that filled my Afrikaans grandmother’s home.
