Contemporary Cape Town artist, Natasja de Wet, has chosen to exhibit a selection of her latest body of work Melancholia (2017) at the University of Cape Town’s Pathology Learning Centre.
Including some of her most personal and emotive mixed-media pieces, the exhibition explores both the fragility and generative possibilities of the human condition. Inspired by the melancholic disposition, De Wet works with layered canvas, paint, glue, and discarded materials including hair, dust, ash, turpentine, and broken feathers found on her studio floor.
Situated among preserved pathology specimens, these works made from detritus evoke a sense of what is residual and damaged – in the human body, the psyche, and the practices of art-making. Together, De Wet’s three-dimensional assemblages and the space of the UCT Pathology Learning Centre question the very nature of what it means to be human – to be vulnerable and broken but also resilient.
Melancholia opens to the public on Saturday 9 March 2019.
Walkabout takes place on Thursday 14 March at 6pm.
Any enquiries about the exhibition can be referred to the curator of the UCT Pathology Learning Centre, Dr Jane Yeats on Tel: +27 (0)21 650 1821 or Email: [email protected].
More about Natasja de Wet: Natasja de Wet was born in South Africa in 1968, and now lives and works in Cape Town. She is a fine art and graphic design graduate from the Tshwane University of Technology and continued her studies in drawing and painting at the University of South Africa (UNISA). In 2017, she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) under the supervision of Associate Professor Virginia McKenny and Senior Lecturer Fabian Saptouw, and graduated with distinction.
Through her work, De Wet aims to reveal the inner character, or soft underbelly, of humankind. Mixed media, drawing, painting and assemblage enable De Wet to visually contemplate internal experiences such as growth, insecurity, sexuality, flux and the various expressions of the human psyche.
She has held numerous solo exhibitions, the most recent of which was titled Running Towards Yourself (2013) at the Casa Labia Gallery in Cape Town. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions and biennales in South Africa and internationally, some of the most notable being the Florence Biennale (Italy, 2009), the Izmir Biennale (Turkey, 2011) and Afrovibes at Galerie Chiellerie (The Netherlands, 2008). Her works are included in the collections of Sasol Gas and the city of Seinäjoki in Finland.
For more information visit: http://www.natasjadewet.com/.
More about the UCT Pathology Learning Centre: The UCT Pathology Learning Centre is located in the JS Marais Building on the university’s Health Sciences campus. It holds an extraordinary collection of teaching specimens that have been accumulated over more than 80 years (originally in the UCT Pathology Museum). These specimens are derived from surgical procedures or autopsies performed at Cape Town teaching hospitals.
For more information visit: http://www.pathologylearningcentre.uct.ac.za/ or https://digitalpathology.uct.ac.za/.