Bioart + Design Africa
VIAD
Imminent and Eminent Ecologies
Bronwyn Katz
Bronwyn Katz was born in 1993 in Kimberley, South Africa, and works between Cape Town and Kimberley. Katz’s recent solo exhibitions include Kaeen-de-haree, Lively Sunshine at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2023); Tus tsĩǀxurub, Rain and Drought at MASSIMODECARLO, Paris (2023); I Turn Myself into a Star and Visit My Loved Ones in the Sky at White Cube, London (2021); Salvaged Letter at Peres Projects, Berlin (2019); / // ! ǂ at blank projects, Cape Town (2019); and A Silent Line, Lives Here at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018).
Katz has participated in group exhibitions such as SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York (2023); The Milk of Dreams at the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2022); Soft Water, Hard Stone at the New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); the Future Generation Art Prize exhibition at PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (2021); Upkeep: Everyday Strategies of Care at The Arts Club of Chicago (2020); We Aim to Live at Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga (2020); NIRIN at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); Là où les eaux se mêlent at the 15th Biennale de Lyon (2019); and Material Insanity at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech (2019).
Katz is a founding member of iQhiya, an 11-women artist collective that has performed across various spaces, including Documenta (in Kassel and Athens), Greatmore Studios, and Iziko South African National Gallery.
General Artist Statement
Bronwyn Katz’s practice engages with land as a repository of love and trauma, reflecting on the notion of place as lived experience, and the ability of the land to transmute, remember and communicate. Working with raw materials such as iron ore, or man-made objects such as foam mattress and bed springs, Katz’s approach to making is driven by intuition, storytelling and the safeguarding of indigenous knowledge systems. The artist's sculptures and installations refer to the political context of their making, embodying acts of resistance that draw attention to marginalised communities and the exploitation of land. For Katz, the language of abstraction gives form to what which remains nameless and is unidentifiable. Theirs is a minimalism that converses with early forms of abstract art methods and traditions of mark-making that long predate western modernism.
Artist Statement on !KhāIIaeb (Flowering Season)
“Through sculpture, installation and audio, Katz combines their interests in the body, the terrestrial, the celestial, and water to offer a picture of interdependence that they articulate as love. The concept of reciprocity is carried forward in the wall-based installation !Khāǁaeb (Flowering season). Arranged as a constellation, the work features the driftwood of invasive alien trees sourced from freshwater locations, and local stones washed by the rainwater that enters the artist's studio. These elements are woven together with copper-wire, copper a medium as conductive as the water that shaped both the stone and the wood, bringing material form to the artist’s discussion on the cycles of renewal.“ - Dineo Diphofa (2024)