honorable mention
Kali van der Merwe south africa
title
Broke-Whole
As artist, I play demi-god arranging my mise-en-scène in a theatre of interacting form on the vast stage of the visible universe (thanks to the Hubble telescope)
On the surface is the dead, broken, scarred, partially decayed state of things, beyond is a search for deeper unity, synthesis and wholeness. The whole is never static, nor final but is in a state of becoming.
In the collaged, death dioramas, chance meetings, strange contortions, couplings, conjunctions and fusions take place. The scenarios conjure up deathly beauty, the miraculous, ecstatic, deformed, hybrid, transformed and sometimes the monstrous.
These works speak to a re-interpretation of the specimen, guided by plays of imagination rather than organised by any reason. Personal history is fused with natural history so the observer becomes part of the observed.
Time pulls everything apart. All form will end in fragmentation, degradation, ruination, and destruction with the passing of the seasons. There is human hubris in trying to hold things together, to re-arrange and re-animate them. Yet I choose to continue, gathering up the dismal, destroyed, imbalanced, defiled, eroded, depleted, dried up, endangered, species scarce, shattered, scattered fragments of what is left of the natural world and make them bit players in my thanaturgical tableaux.
If I bestow illusory power over death, it is to honour life in its mind- expanding multiplicity. All life is sacred and I never take life, every creature comes to me as a serendipitous gift, sadly often via the wheel of a negligent driver.
Death creates renewal for the dying of the old makes space and is sustenance for the new. Death is to be welcomed and honoured, not feared, for it is an integral part of the intelligent whole.
Kali holds a Fine Art degree focussed on sculpture from the University of Cape Town. Post formal study, she sojourned in Berlin “the capital of re- invention”. Returning to South Africa with an interest in filmmaking, she began a career as a documentary filmmaker. Her work combined social issue filmmaking with creative social development and her collaborative documentaries won multiple best film and jury awards at local and international film festivals.
After a successful 15 year film career, Kali followed a strong impulse to return to personal creativity in an intimate way. 7 years ago, a series of awakenings made it no longer possible to live in the noise and bustle of the city. She found creative refuge near the remote, micro village of Baardskeerdersbos in the Overberg of the Western Cape. In rural silence, she plumbed her own depths in a series of photographic, mythological, transforming self-portraits. During this process, fynbos and fauna in her immediate surroundings, became subjects of inspiration too. Kali sees herself as a visual advocate on behalf of fragile and threatened wild animals and plants.
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entry description
Broke-Whole opens an aperture on the mysteries of life through the lens of death.As artist, I play demi-god arranging my mise-en-scène in a theatre of interacting form on the vast stage of the visible universe (thanks to the Hubble telescope)
On the surface is the dead, broken, scarred, partially decayed state of things, beyond is a search for deeper unity, synthesis and wholeness. The whole is never static, nor final but is in a state of becoming.
In the collaged, death dioramas, chance meetings, strange contortions, couplings, conjunctions and fusions take place. The scenarios conjure up deathly beauty, the miraculous, ecstatic, deformed, hybrid, transformed and sometimes the monstrous.
These works speak to a re-interpretation of the specimen, guided by plays of imagination rather than organised by any reason. Personal history is fused with natural history so the observer becomes part of the observed.
Time pulls everything apart. All form will end in fragmentation, degradation, ruination, and destruction with the passing of the seasons. There is human hubris in trying to hold things together, to re-arrange and re-animate them. Yet I choose to continue, gathering up the dismal, destroyed, imbalanced, defiled, eroded, depleted, dried up, endangered, species scarce, shattered, scattered fragments of what is left of the natural world and make them bit players in my thanaturgical tableaux.
If I bestow illusory power over death, it is to honour life in its mind- expanding multiplicity. All life is sacred and I never take life, every creature comes to me as a serendipitous gift, sadly often via the wheel of a negligent driver.
Death creates renewal for the dying of the old makes space and is sustenance for the new. Death is to be welcomed and honoured, not feared, for it is an integral part of the intelligent whole.
about the photographer
Kali van der Merwe’s main artistic explorations take place in the dark, with the night as her photographic darkroom. Kali blurs boundaries between painting and photography with long exposures and a technique called ‘light painting’. Her work traverses nuanced interconnection between death and life, searching for the soul of form with light.Kali holds a Fine Art degree focussed on sculpture from the University of Cape Town. Post formal study, she sojourned in Berlin “the capital of re- invention”. Returning to South Africa with an interest in filmmaking, she began a career as a documentary filmmaker. Her work combined social issue filmmaking with creative social development and her collaborative documentaries won multiple best film and jury awards at local and international film festivals.
After a successful 15 year film career, Kali followed a strong impulse to return to personal creativity in an intimate way. 7 years ago, a series of awakenings made it no longer possible to live in the noise and bustle of the city. She found creative refuge near the remote, micro village of Baardskeerdersbos in the Overberg of the Western Cape. In rural silence, she plumbed her own depths in a series of photographic, mythological, transforming self-portraits. During this process, fynbos and fauna in her immediate surroundings, became subjects of inspiration too. Kali sees herself as a visual advocate on behalf of fragile and threatened wild animals and plants.
back to gallery
