The portrait: a sense of time and place - Unisa staff exhibition, "Uncanny stories" (2021)

Abstract

Through my creative processes, I meet the challenge of evoking a sense of place and navigating the unfolding time of faraway countries visited. I am influenced by the richness of the fabrics that I love in these spaces, which I probe to develop new ideas for my creative projects and started my career as a textile designer. This experience was crucial in my decision to become an artist. During my internship, I familiarised myself with the intricate patterns and shapes, and the repeating thereof still fascinates me many years later. I incorporate these within my drawings and paintings. Through my journey of discovery, I looked with new eyes at different fabrics, fragments, fibres, and textures to enhance my portraits. I, therefore, set the problem of intertwining place, people and fabric as experienced.

In my artworks, I portrayed my fascination with the human portrait (people from different cultures and languages) and the self-portrait joined by architectural backgrounds and other fibres and fabrics. Through these elements, I drew and emphasised the sitter’s cultural fragility and temporality, a particular cultural heritage and an all-embracing travel realm. The artistic and aesthetic experiences I encountered influenced my vision and my life as an artist Through my research, I want to ask the following pertinent questions:

• Why do I execute my artwork realistically and treat the sitter as an individual, a known person or subject, within a recognisable space and present it in a fresh manner? • What combination of visual technologies and techniques can I apply to portray the subject matter? • To what extent can I use ancient painting techniques and crafts to evoke place by rediscovery and reinvigoration? • How can installations include the revival of old paint and drawing techniques combined with unusual drawing materials like sepia rocks, sticks and wires?

The primary objective of my artistic creations and portraits is inspired by my extensive travels preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, I could not travel and consequently relied on photographs, memory and Baroque music clips to locate my creative works. The travel narrative is central to my portrayals of my subject matter: the portrait and self-portrait. Thus, I had to relocate myself as an artist within the problematic reminiscence of lost time and remember the different places and spaces that I experienced and transform these memories to create a new presence. My study is thus based on retaining and recalling my memories and joining these images with a glimpse of gold leaf. I want to recreate the old painting and drawing techniques used centuries ago and put them in a contemporary space and application. I thus prepare my surfaces and paint mixtures with the sense of knowledge of alchemy. Consequently, I am aware that not all paints, ingredients and materials can be mixed and used because a chemical reaction may occur between the components.

My methodology often involves drawing and painting self-portraits to represent any individual or flaneur that I experienced in a specific cultural space. I contextualise and structure the series of artworks with the overall title of The portrait: a sense of time and place. This exhibition consists of three installations: • travel with gold artefacts • a sense of place • a sense of music and performance My artworks, in essence, depict realistic spaces and places that I experienced first-hand but now recollected and the fragmented memory joined by my senses.

The three thematically-joined installations consist of twenty-four artworks in various media. They are executed on different types of support and joined by the softness and subtlety of the draped material fragments. These artworks were created through my sensory perception, experiences, and explorations that can exist objectively and independently from my mind. I love to travel and explore different cultures, archaeology, and artefacts. Through this exploration, I concentrate on restoring and preserving antiques and other old things, gilding them, and creating new multiple entry points and layers of resonance. Through the recollection of my memories, I can share my experiences through my artworks. Through these portraits, I explore people from all layers of life. I visually portray glimpses of their unique stories within their specific spaces, places, and cultures by combining these elements with the rich textures of selected fabrics striving to respond to cultural heritage.