Graduated from University of Cape Town, emerging artist Bronwyn Katz (1993) uses sculpture, installation, video and performance to engage with the concept of land as a repository of memory, reflecting on the notion of place or space as lived experience. The South African has landed her first exhibition at Peres Projects in Berlin, entitled Salvaged Letter, which serves as a continuation of her interest in the creation of systems of notation which gesture to lost ancestral language and potential imagined languages. For the exhibition Katz collaborates with words from a 1928 statement made by !Ora language activist Benjamin Kats. Mind you, it concerns a now extinct language South African tribal language which was spoken by a minority group in the southern Cape Province. Katz attempts to retain the words of Kats by creating codes with her salvaged materials, which aim to support and affirm individual words from the statement. The formal qualities of these codes are largely influenced by Katz’s existing artistic language. Through the creation of these codes/visual forms realised as sculptures and installation Katz offers an alternative mode of preserving, reading and understanding language. Katz’s work on excavating communal history and the recognition of diverse forms of expression is crucial for the rebuilding of a South African archive and reclaiming what was assumed to be lost or destroyed. Often using found materials as the departure point for her works, the artist’s approach to making is driven foremost by formal concerns such as composition and line, expressed in an abstract minimalist language. Conceptually, her sculptures refer to the political context of their making, embodying subtle acts of resistance that draw attention to the social constructions and boundaries that continue to define those spaces (on through Jan 10).
Peres Projects
Karl Marx Allee 82 (Friedrichshain)
10243 Berlin
Telephone: +49 30 27590770
Mon-Fri 11-6
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
