Sonya Rademeyer
POINTS
2021
Egypt
theIStruggle I & III, depict the ongoing personal struggle of post-colonialism from the artist’s white perspective. Wearing a dress that resembles clothing worn during early colonization, the artist speaks to her own internal struggle caused by this dominant and destructive politic. The standing image relays the full force of the artists own body against the imagined weight of such a dominant politic which, she inherently knows, she is unable to overpower. Nevertheless, she exerts the necessary pressure whilst fully understanding the impossibility thereof.
Struggling with the horns as she leans into the imagined beast of colonialism, her personal fight is with her inherited ancestral lineage. Rademeyer deems herself accountable for the contributions of her ancestral lineage which may have contributed to the still lingering inter-generational pain of today. The struggle, however, does not remain only with the artist but broadens out to include those struggling with ‘whiteness’ in a post-colonial society. Through this short series of three photographic works, Rademeyer hopes to unearth questions relating to whiteness itself, thereby questioning what whiteness is and what it means to face one’s own whiteness?
It is a something that has to be grappled with.
She is unable to escape her origins.
photo credits: MyMalaika_Photography
Short video here
Digital catalogue here
Art Harare Contemporary Art Fair
2020
Zimbabwe
Having been born and raised in Zimbabwe but living in South Africa for many years, artIHARARE has allowed me the opportunity to, for the first time in my artistic career, show work in the country of my birth. Having been a selected artist for this contemporary art fair, I have had the opportunity to engage in various online webinars and exchanges with Zimbabwean artists and in the Diaspora, often leaving me quite emotional as I have re-connected with my place of birth and country of origin.
For artIHARARE, my collaboration with composer Franco Prinsloo (South Africa) titled “please forgive me” (2020) was selected. The video work is a plea for forgiveness: for land dispossession and the severing from indigenous lands in Southern Africa due to early colonization, as viewed from a white settler post-colonial perspective. Connected to the video, is the exhibition of a photographic portrait (of the artist) portrayed in a white ‘voortrekker’ dress holding a genealogy book of the Rademeyer lineage that set foot on the African continent in the early 1700’s. The portrait, taken in the Tankwa Karoo, as is the video, reflects the acknowledgement by the artist of the ignorance concerning the devastation caused by her colonial ancestral lineage.
The work hopes to open up discussions around inter-generational trauma connected to notions of land segregation and land dispossession directly linked to early colonization.
photo credits: Niki Vanos
Short video here
Short info here
Imibala Art in Isolation Exhibition
2020
South Africa
IOS I, II & III is a short series (3) of works created at the beginning of the global COVID -19 Pandemic.
The images depict distorted and disfigured faces which have been painted in red food colouring. The choice of food colouring as medium was purposefully chosen during the time of severe lockdown, where adaptions to materials needed to be made, often requiring the use of what was to be found in the common household environment. This choice speaks to ideas of societal and economic isolation.
The accompanying drawing to each painted and distorted face, reflect survivalist narratives as related by individuals who were not only hospitalized, but were also ventilated in ICU’s. These are survival stories as experienced in the heartland of isolation, distanced from family and friends in high-tech medical environments. As such patients are often sedated and hallucinate under such circumstances, the distorted faces pair with these isolated narratives.
Short info here
Tankwa Artscape Exhibition
2019
Romania
The group exhibition of Tankwa Artscape Residency 2019 - held in the remote Tankwa Karoo (South Africa) -was hosted in Romania as part of Contemporary Nature. Exhibiting the photos of the Tankwa within the whiteness of a wintery Romania creates strong contrast with the dry and arid images shown.
photo credits: Bronwyn Trupp / Niki Vanos / Tegan Faye
Short info here
Dwell in possibility exhibition
2019
Centenary Art Gallery, UFS, Bloemfontein
South Africa
1-19 July 2019.
A group exhibition where the curatorial rationale was to 'dwell in the possibility', after Emily Dickenson's poem I dwell in possibility. I imagined the possibility of felled trees still existing, much as humans experience the presence of phantom limbs.
Each trace is the frottage of a physically felled tree: a topography of circular Arboretum life.
Blogpost here
Short info here
The in-between / solo exhibition
2019
AVA Gallery, Cape Town
South Africa
4 - 26 April 2019.
In The In-Between I explore, through the action of gestural drawing, the idea of in-between spaces and the invisibility of the space between Self and Other. Likening the in-between space as an imaginary geographical space, it is within this interstitial space, these boundaries, that the fragility of empathy might be visualized.
Blogpost here
Short info here
photo credit: Mia Thom
forward? forward! forward ... exhibition
2018/9
Stellenbosch University Museum, Stellenbosch
South Africa
5 December 2018 - 30 April 2019.
An exhibition that re-imagines the human and the human relationship to knowledge into the African future, asking questions around inter-disciplinary and collaborative knowledge.
STEMSpeak (2018) poses questions ways in which human-to-human communication will take place. Working with two circular spheres covered in Braille (a tactile medium), connectivity might instead happen through the non-human form of digital speak.
Short info here
