Soltice Oracle

Exploring the effect aging has on intergenerational familial bonds.

Even when you are cloudy, I love you.

This self-portrait aims to depict my feelings of being overwhelmed. I surrounded the monochrome painting with printed text that uses the suffix  "-ize or -ise" . i this context, the suffix is used to make me conform to an idea that the viewer may have of me or the portrait, i.e. to demonize or intellectualize. Tattered fabric covers parts of the painting, held together by safety pins, in a vain attempt to hide my vulnerability. It is a work that denotes how little control I have over how I am seen by people. Initially, this realisation can be very stressful, but it becomes a freeing experience when I let go of expectations placed on me and others' opinions of me.

On Tenter Hooks

These are works that are part of an evolving body of work that is focussed on dreaming and the conversations present in them. They are also purposely focussed on colour and joy.

Dream sequences

This work builds on the body of work I displayed as part of my MA(VA) final exhibition earlier this year. As with that collection, this work uses palimpsest as a starting point into my investigation and practice. My previous use of fabric is echoed in this work. I deploy solid fabric alongside diaphanous strips and crepe bandages to add meaning through layering to my work.
An unpleasant visit to a local GP left me with many questions about how others may experience healthcare and prejudice. Initially I worked around metaphors for healing. I tore an old curtain into strips after I drew charcoal faces on it, adding the red cross symbol onto it with rough embroidery. I wanted it to embody how as humans we all are bound by our fragile corporeal experiences. Amidst my investigation into prejudices in healthcare the Ukrainian and Russian conflict flared up again. I witnessed, through various screens, the horrifically all too familiar scenes of refugees and victims of war. In response to this unfolding tragedy my investigation widened and I found that the strips I created became somewhat like bandages, torn fragmented images that attempt to heal. I tried to imagine what healthcare would mean in this circumstance, where it was desperately needed. How many curtains were being torn up across Ukraine and indeed the world to serve as makeshift bandages, as stop gaps, unttil a trained healthcare worker could be found? My initial instinct of creating a healing work from my own experiences grew to assimilate this event and the all-consuming tragedy of war and refugees. I wanted to explore how art can become a metaphor for physical healing.
I wrote messages of hope on sheer voile and attached them to strips of emerald green fabric on which I stenciled a silhouette of my own naked and vulnerable body, the black and white stencils becoming like a camouflage pattern - vulnerability hiding in plain sight. I dripped Mercurochrome on the voile and stenciled my body on clean bandages to encapsulate vascular systems I had constructed from wool and glass beads. The stencils on the crepe became lonely shadows that loom over the scene. When suspended work became a make shift stretcher to carry the wounded. Dates of conflicts and war appeared on the curtain strips and red thread became trickles of fresh blood. I wrote about crying mothers across the world, my own experiences of hearing the wails of mothers that lost children. 
After a while this artwork became emotionally overwhelming and exhausted me. It seemed to me to be very one-sided in its representation of how I have experienced myself and others in moments of crisis. I did not want to create a work that offered no hope and that only mired in the immediate tragedy and trauma and so  I started to build up layers of sparkly glass beading and shiny sequins in an attempt to show that beauty can be found amongst apparent ruins, that the human spirit always finds a way to reveal its potential even in times of intense trauma, that hope keeps joy alive.
I decided to title the work Verband. A word from my native Afrikaans. It is the noun for a bandage but it can also denote two things that stand in relation with one another, bounded together by common purpose as we are all bonded together, we are all connected by our fragile corporality and tenacity of spirit.


Verband

This painting includes a myriad of symbols and personal references that I believe served to pull my boyhood self into the present and give him agency. This work is important to me as it signifies the proverbial loose end that I was starting to tug at. I titled the work Souvenir of the 80s. This proved to be a fitting title, as it is a gift from a far-off time that stands as a reminder of my experiences there. 

Souvenir of the 80s

An installation that features a work desk and fabrics that form part of my research and process. The wall above the desk features a collection of visual poems.

Black book and process installation

These are a collection of book objects that formed part of a library installation that emphasised the role that reading spaces had on the development of my  own and other  queer identities

A collection of book objects

This work deals with the repression of speech in system of government. Oppressive regimes keep people quiet and docile through rigid discipline and militarisation.

My aim with this installation is to extend the immersive experience for the visitor, by creating a space where they can dwell, and move through the maze of the palimpsestic membranes. Debris: 2021-1985 and the act of palimpsesting present in its creation assist me in giving voice to, and understanding of, traumatic events; the hangings offer fragmented phenomenological clues embedded on their surfaces in writing, imagery and physical interventions such as stitching and tearing.. I chose to create my works on nylon voile, the type that is commonly used in suburban houses as window treatments. Commonly referred to as net curtains, these drops of fabric serve a double purpose: they provide privacy to those behind the curtain but simultaneously offer an opportunity for clandestine scrutiny of events and people who pass by the outside of the curtain. When darkness descends and the light source emanates from behind the curtain, the viewing roles are reversed: those behind the curtain become the object of the surreptitious scrutiny. The visual tension created by this false feeling of privacy fascinates me as it denotes a metaphorical shift in power relations.

Debris: 2021-1985 

This work entitled "Fragilemakerfragile" started as a painting. The painting was an expression of anger at my inner saboteur , a bitter confrontation. I scribbled angry words  over its surface and eventually painted a cowering and burning dog over it that came to symbolise my struggles with this inner voice and its insidious undermining of my self. When I started this body of work it was this voice that spoke the loudest and I realised that I could cower like the burning dog or rise up and refute this bitter voice.  This work became an entry point into my self dialogue it became a tool to make me fragile so that I could explore and grow from my own vulnerability. 


Fragilemakerfragile

 I  disassemble and reinterpret works that deal with negative inner dialogues. "Bluntknife" consists of a drawing that dealt with grief and re-worked it into a woven paper work that still honours  the memory but does not dwell on the pain of death and loss.  A work that takes a self-portrait drawn in a moment of crisis (as a coping device) and obscures it by weaving it into itself and changing the dialogue.



Bluntknife

 With "Speakblystil" I am able to explore my unwillingness to be vulnerable, to speak and to confront all that tells me to keep quiet. The self portrait in this drawing is not cut up and woven but rather a drawing that functions on one surface, a collapsed conversation where each voice is given equal volume. 


Speakblystil

With "Lotophagi" I confront my own mortality and my notions of ageing and the need for trauma resolution. The title relates to Greek mythology and translates as lotus eater. This denotes a person who is not mindful and whiles away time on frivolous things and forgets or ignores reality. In the reading of my painting the lotophagi symbolise my periods of deep depression, languishing in self-pity or needless reflection and how this robs one of precious time. The concept of the lotophagi and that of datura (a genus of poisonous flowering plants) has featured in my work for many years and is a potent personal symbol for situations, people and emotions that seem beautiful but are in fact poisonous.

Lotophagi

"Benediction" is meant as a representation of my adult self having conversations about relationships, sexuality, subterfuge and forgiveness. The self-dialogue in this painting started as a discussion on the end of a decade-long relationship, but as the layers started accumulating on the surface I realised that there was a deeper conversation that had to be had, one of letting go of anger and giving grace to that which passed between two adults, to take a firm stance to realise what my role was in the chaos and to take responsibility for the forgiveness of my erstwhile partner and myself. The painting includes a self-portrait reaching out of the surface as if to pull myself up from the trauma: a large yellow hand reaches in over the surface as if to soothe and reach down to me. I integrated a drawing of foxgloves to become a metaphor for situations and emotions that seem beautiful at the outset but are indeed toxic if not fatal when engaged with.

Benediction

"Snakes and Ladders" comprises an inner dialogue about the period of my childhood that started in 1985. It is the embodiment of a conversation about loss of innocence and childhood, confusion and self-reproach. The title refers to the board game of snakes and ladders. In the game a roll of the dice predicts whether a player can go up a ladder and skip ahead or get swallowed by a snake and regress to a lower point. In this work the actions of the game become a metaphor for how fate is dealt out in childhood - one has no agency as a minor and one’s progress in life is dependent on the choices of adults. My reference to 'pittura infamante'  in this painting relates to the ostracism and shame I felt as a child. The painting contains drawings of eyes, denoting the ever-present judgment I felt at this time. As the layering of this painting evolved there was a great need for me to force myself to speak. This need is reflected in the many instances of phrases that admonish or encourage speech littered around the surface. As with the other works in this series, there is emphasis placed on forgiveness of self and others.

Snakes and ladders

These works feature fabric with melted faces in both black and white synthetic fabrics interspersed with black and white photographic découpage prints on white diaphanous fabric. These prints encourage the visitor to let go of trauma by using a play on words in Afrikaans: "vergeet om te ont hou" and "ont hou om te vergeet". In Afrikaans the word onthou has a double meaning — it can mean remember as well as refrain. By placing a space between 'ont' and 'hou' I deconstruct the word for memory to visually take on both meanings. The prints thus read refrain to forget and forget to refrain. With this statement I hope to impart to the visitor the futility of withholding traumatic memories and my belief, that some semblance of catharsis can come from engaging  with memories of trauma. Included in this  body of work is an artwork "The future is read backward" that  attempts to reclaim traumatic language by the reshuffling of the letters that make up harmful words in order to regain agency, these words are accompanied by cold porcelain faces that symbolise the differing positions of the self as these words and conversations are deconstructed.

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Corné Venter