Browsing by Author "Zaayman, Carine"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    14 ways to remember Nzira gumi nena dzekuyeuka : exploring and preserving memories
    (2009) Matindike, Tashinga; Zaayman, Carine
    My project is one of memorialisation, expressed as a creative process. A core theme throughout my work concerns the notions of absence and presence, as the project is founded on a personal loss and inspired by a desire to sustain the memories of my late brother. My investigation involves the exploration and preservation of the memories of my brother. The body of work manifests as the residue of my reflections on grief and memory that I have chosen to exhibit in a commemorative manner. In turn, my practice has functioned as a source of comfort in the course of my mourning.
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    A deeper kind of nothing
    (2019) Abraham, Catherine; MacKenny, Virginia; Zaayman, Carine
    'Nothing’1 is frequently associated with insignificance. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'to reduce to nothing is to consider or treat as worthless or unimportant’. This project aims to reveal that this form of nothing is, essentially, something. As a child, I was told that my struggle with breath, with asthma, was nothing but psychosomatic. The heart of this project is a physical manifestation of a psychosomatic nothing, and the sense of personal insignificance implied by repetitive, unacknowledged housework. The overarching title, A Deeper Kind of Nothing, was garnered from theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing: Why there Is Something Rather than Nothing (2012) in which he explores the origins of our universe. In this book, he refers to nothing as the space that exists where something once was, an absence. He explains that 'all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing - involving the absence of space itself - and which may one day return to nothing’ (2012: 183). Krauss asserts that 'nothing is every bit as physical as something’, and this idea of a 'deeper nothing’ stirred my thinking. Nothing is one thing, but a deeper nothing, one that the universe may have arisen from, is quite another. Relating this to the impact of seemingly insignificant objects, events and feelings, nothing becomes something physical that is understood to be both tangible and generative of something new. It is this 'something new’, the outcome of what is considered 'nothing’, which is the deeper kind of nothing that this project presents. My reflections on generative nothingness have produced a series of performative processes: 1. Collecting - breaths, eggshells (the main materials of this body of work) and words 2. Working with breath, eggshells and words, on my own and with others 3. Conversing while painting eggshells. These methodologies are made manifest here in a book that is a record of the transcribed texts, short films, balloons, painted eggshells and boxes, bronzes and residue from a 'banquet’. Discarded eggshells and exhaled breaths are traces of the everyday that are typically overlooked. The dispensability inherent in both provides a basis from which to express real and imagined subjugation experienced by 'the good child’, 'the good wife’ and 'the good mother’: the child who felt shame for causing a fuss over her struggle to breathe and the wife who walked on eggshells.
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    Creation of fictional community
    (2008) Simonson, Karina; Zaayman, Carine
    This essay explores how the creation of a fictional community is expressed through my body of work. These works do not reference an actual community as such, but are an "imagining"of a nonexisting one, so that they can be understood as a "fictional" or "imagined" community. The dynamic of this imagining is located in the exchange between the memories of my real-life Lithuanian community, and my investigation of the ways in which symbolic objects and group interactions create a sense of community. In this way, my work can be said to reference actual communities, but emphasise the symbolic, or"imaginary"ways in which they hang together.
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    Homunculi of the Digital City
    (2020) Minnie, Heinrich; Zaayman, Carine; Saptouw, Fabian
    Employing the media of video and installation, Homunculi of the digital city explores what it means to live in a digitally-mediated city. In my work, I personify both the city and city dwellers as cyborgian characters, by drawing on Donna Haraway's definition of the cyborg. I expand my personification further by employing the Homunculus from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust II (1950, originally published in 1832). I utilise Matthew Gandy, Ingrid Hoelzl and Rémi Marie's discussions around the broader city so to consider the material and immaterial elements that constitute it. The screens that populate contemporary cities embody both these elements: they are physical objects that perform invisible data, in the vein of Boris Groĭs' analogy of an image file being analogous to a piece of music that needs to be performed in order to be sensible. By drawing on these frameworks, I position the city as a high density of screens that are physically ubiquitous, often a prosthetic, and function as a gateway to the immaterial elements of the city.
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    Jazz contacts : envisaging Basil Breakey's photographic remains beyond the archive
    (2012) Zimmer, Niklas; Zaayman, Carine
    South African jazz photography, both as a particular instance of visual history and as a local site for an international photographic genre is largely under-researched. In consequence, its iconic trajectory, with its interconnected sets of specific historical and cultural contexts, is still inaccessible to a larger viewership. One of the very few books of South African jazz photography, Beyond the Blues: Township Jazz in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with photographs by Basil Breakey, points to the fractured and traumatic history of South African jazz culture. Complementary to this exists a layered, undisciplinable ‘Konvolut’ of Breakey’s contact sheets and fragments. Forensic-quality digitisation and printing procedures open them up as a ‘superreality’ that contains multitudes of overlapping, inextricable traces social history beyond photographic genre conventions.
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    Just Don't Know How She Does It: a Feminist's Showroom of Subversive Machinations
    (2018) Robertson, Emily Harriet Bulbring; Zaayman, Carine; Skotnes, Pippa
    I have created a body of work that takes the form of a series of inventions or products aimed at giving their users the appearance of conforming to existing gender stereotypes pertaining to the roles of women, whilst actually allowing them to live a life of their own choosing. I have communicated my intentions through the media of collage, montage, installation and mixed-media assemblage. The collective body of work is displayed in the mode of a showroom, as one might encounter in a home exposition or convention. Some of the stereotypes I have found most pervasive in my lived experiences, and those of the women I know, include sentiments such as: all women should be docile and submissive; a woman's life is incomplete without a husband and child; women's primary concerns should be the domestic space and serving their families; a career or other personal goals should never be prioritised over family and home; a woman's body and sexuality is purely for male pleasure and consumption, and she should be damned if she behaves otherwise. As a point of departure in the development of this project I have focused on how these stereotypes are perpetuated within popular culture. I have taken cues from Pop art especially concerning the way in which these artists have employed images and objects from everyday consumer culture. To recall, Pop art was a movement that emerged in the 1950s and responded to the increasingly pervasive and omnipresent consumerist culture. Through mimicry of consumer product design and making use of mass media objects, artists critiqued the agendas of their capitalist society. One of the major instances of parody that occurred within the movement was in the elevation of ordinary products or celebrities to subject matter for high art, such as in Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans (1962) or in Jeff Koons's New Shelton Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981). The framing of consumer culture as high art invited a reconsideration of the value of such objects as well as the institution of high art. The title of this exhibition acknowledges its Pop art lineage, as it references Richard Hamilton's seminal collage piece Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956). The inter-textual reference to Hamilton's work is further articulated by my use of collage and the ironic, self-aware employment of references to consumer culture. Artists working within the Pop milieu, such as Hamilton, are noted for their use of irony and parody, which cuts into both consumer culture and fine art practices. Such double-edged critique also underpins this project
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    Mend: a personal exploration of healing
    (2016) Niederhumer, Gina; Zaayman, Carine; Saptouw, Fabian
    As the title suggests, this dissertation text deals with repair, and while 'mending' also refers to sewing, here I use it in conjunction with healing and the transformation of an inner conflict. Coming from a family of embroiderers in Austria I use needle and thread as my tools and physical objects as triggers in search of what has been forgotten or repressed. The work centers largely around a shared history between my mother and myself, which though marked by many separations, the love for needlework connects us again and provides a meeting place that bridges the divide caused by absences in the past and in the present. Divided into two columns, 'academic' and 'personal', in subtitled paragraphs elaborate and reflect on 'memory', 'family narrative', 'trauma', 'needlework' and 'art-making as a way of personal transformation' in an attempt to understand the story of my life and how it fits into the larger family narrative. The catalog section of the text lists the art works that resulted from this engagement with my personal story, while the accompanying artists book offers an in-death view into the process.
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    Not today, but tomorrow.
    (2010) Nesbitt, Robyn; Zaayman, Carine
    'Not today, but tomorrow', the title of this body of work, references a collection of daily lists I assembled during my first year of the Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) programme. I had written 'not today but tomorrow' on one of my Monday lists and that was all. It seems a fitting description and context for this body of work as I try to hold on to the moment, today, in anticipation of what is yet to come, tomorrow.
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    The pioneering spirit in the face of mystery : a creative exploration of phenomena pertinent to the information age in a systems paradigm
    (2006) Van Niekerk, Elsabé; Zaayman, Carine
    My artwork deals with the experience and concept of 'mystery' - mystery that inspires awe - and sometimes fear - and that is located beyond the known. The sublime is one area where I experience mystery intensely. Immanuel Kant, an important philosopher of the Enlightenment, proposes that one can and should contain the sublime with reason, and in the process elevate it to an objective, universal and rational truth. My response to, and understanding of, the sublime differs from that of Kant: I do not attempt in any way to contain the sublime. In my work, I wish only to express my relationship to it, and to experience it as a personal, intimate and emotional truth.
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    Reprocessing interference : an artistic exploration of the visual material generated by interference
    (2006) Rynn, Sarah; Van der Schijff, Johann; Zaayman, Carine
    My body of work is concerned with the constructed promise of telecommunication - that is, the promise to connect people all over the world via telephone lines, computer networks and, most recently, satellite signals. The development of and access to networked systems has brought about this "utopian promise" (Mitchell 2005: 305), an ideal of instant connectivity that allows a user to be in contact with others through technological devices over vast distances. Connectivity supposedly enables users to develop and sustain relationships on the Internet. However, the question arises whether telecommunication technologies are living up to their promise. My title, Reprocessing Inte/ference: An artistic exploration of the visual material generated by inte/terence, refers to the concepts pertaining to this promise and also to the failure of the promise, focusing on the notions of distance and interference. It further encapsulates my working method, a process of degrading and filtering both my own and found footage.
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    Revisiting the future
    (2013) Dooley, Jeffrey; Zaayman, Carine
    Revisiting the future re-examines some ideas of the Italian Futurist painters Boccioni, Balla, Carra, Russolo and Severini. These ideas included multiplied sensations and states of mind, interpenetration and superimposition, lines of force, and placing the spectator at the center of the painting. These ideas are then examined in relation to the senses and to contemporary art practice. I present ideas on how images for the various senses can operate both individually and collectively to create interactive, multi-sensory communication surfaces. The works I produced are my response to the challenges posed to painting and artistic practice by the sensorium and the Futurist painters' ideas.
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    Seeing what is not there: figuring the anarchive
    (2019) Zaayman, Carine; Skotnes, Philippa
    Absences in archives render as impossible access to the fullness of the past. Yet, within the post-apartheid sociopolitical milieu, demands are made of the slivers of evidence in colonial archives to yield more than they contain, to provide material from which counter-colonial narratives may be fashioned. I understand these demands as pressure exerted on archives. In this thesis, I consider this pressure in relation to historical narrations of the lives of two women from the colonial period of the Cape: Krotoa and Anne. Krotoa was a Goringhaicona woman who acted as an interpreter between the Dutch and the Khoekhoe in the early colonial period at the Cape (from 1652). I examine extant literature on Krotoa to show the various ways in which authors have responded to the pressure on the archives in which she appears and how they have dealt with absences within them. I then discuss a number of instances in the archives to demonstrate that the imprint of absence is clearly visible in these archives. Anne was a Scottish noblewoman who lived at the Cape from 1797 to 1802. I investigate the literature about Anne to show how scholars have responded to the pressure on her archive primarily by overlooking the absences within it. I then consider two aspects of Anne’s archive to demonstrate that it, too, bears the imprint of absence. In contrast to approaches to absence that seek to fill in the gaps in archives, I argue that paying attention to the imprints of absence enables us to begin to grasp something of absence in its own right, that is, the negative space of an archive that constitutes a form of absolute absence. I have named this absolute absence in archives the “anarchive”. Identifying the imprints of absences as indicative of the anarchive has led me to instantiate the anarchive through figuration. This is achieved via visual art methodologies in which I systematically avoid reconstruction and instead convene an archive of photographs whose subject, and the curatorial rationale behind their display, is emptiness and transience. My figuring situates the anarchive centre stage and proposes engagement with it as a means of escaping the constraints of archives. When the full extent of the anarchive is brought into view, the limitations of archives are sharply delineated and their ability to control our understanding of the past is rendered absurd.
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    Through the garden fence
    (2016) Robins, Kathy; Skotnes, Pippa; Zaayman, Carine
    This project attempts to tie together different threads of my experience. It begins with the memory of looking through the garden fence and hedge of my childhood and considers the simultaneously separate and enmeshed lives of my immediate family and those outside of it. In this project I have engaged with the garden as a point of connection, a means by which to consider the possibility of more Edenic, sustainable futures rooted in concepts of care. An investigation into care, through my making, has been central to my research. Under the harsh structures of apartheid, the natural world carried on in spite of the social and environmental restrictions implemented by the apartheid government. I am interested primarily in human experiences of care, belonging and relationship against the backdrop of migrancy, the displacement of discarded people to infertile land, and the loss of indigenous cultures and natural areas. My intention in this work is for the viewer to be reminded of the unending cycles of nature - seasons, joy, nurturance and recurrence - in their silent yet peripatetic way. In this turning towards nature there is a recognition of the spiritual essence of the world as separate and distinct from humankind's inhumanity to each other. In a contemporary context, the prevalence of people from across Africa displaced into South Africa demands a closer consideration of human connections to the land, as does the recent crisis of Syrian migrants in Europe and the ensuing ethnic xenophobia. At present there are 60 million people displaced due to war, religious tension, politics and race. However, there is hope in the care provided by non-governmental organisations, the United Nations, governments and grassroots initiatives; people who want to help those with a bag and a child on their back.