SITE, MATERIALITY AND RITUAL

(R)evisit, rebu(I)ld, re(P)eat, 2013, Site-specific earth, ash and resin, 2540mm X 3800mm 135mm

Installation image, 2021, Oliewenhuis Art Museum

Installation image, 2021, Oliewenhuis Art Museum

Adelheid considers most of the materials she uses in her artworks as site-specific, either directly collected from a site of trauma and loss or attempting to reference that site. These site-specific materials include earth, cremated bones, hair, nail clippings, breast milk and lint. The use of resin and Plexiglas is primarily to support these materials, and they also contribute meanings through their own material characteristics. She explains that she thinks of these site-specific materials as imbued with meaning and that she imagines the materials she uses, for example earth from Nazi concentration camps in Poland (the country where her grandfather was born and fled from during WWII) to have “witnessed” that trauma and loss. She further developed this imaginative thinking by means of particular processes when either re-working collected materials or creating new meaningfully imbued materials. These processes become ritual-like due to the structure she imposes on the way she collects and re-works the materials into her artworks. The ritualised actions of, for example, repetitive procedures of scattering, sprinkling, burning, pouring and grinding, and her working in specific places or at specific times, are all evocative. Moreover, there repetitive, place –or time-specific actions are enlivened by personal imaginative processes. For Adelheid, even though she can imagine her way into something terrible like her own death or a family member’s death, her artwork, in all its various facets, allows her to engage with those thoughts and feelings and to some extent imagine a way out of it again. Her art making helps her be less paralysed and overcome, while it does not smooth over or hide realities. This ability to integrate the awareness of the certainty of death with the lush consciousness of continuation of life is after all what makes humans exceptional.

Oliewenhuis Art Museum is located at 16 Harry Smith Street, Bloemfontein. Entrance is free and secure parking is available for visitors and for buses. A ramp at the entrance of the main entrance provides access for wheel chairs, while a lift provides access to the Permanent Collection display areas on the first floor. For more information on Oliewenhuis Art Museum please contact the Museum at 051 011 0525 (ext 200) or oliewen@nasmus.co.za. Stay up to date by following Oliewenhuis Art Museum on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for all upcoming exhibitions and events.