Van Horison tot Horison
March 07, 2026 - June 20, 2026
La Motte Ateljee, La Motte Wine Farm, Franschhoek
A group exhibition bringing together artists working in a wide range of media concerning landscapes.
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Artist statement
Emma Willemse
The title of the exhibition, Van Horison tot Horison, suggests observations of the horizon, the furthest sight available for the eye to see as we journey across the land or the seas. It is the attributes of the ever-changing visuals and the unobtainability of being present at the horizon when viewing it, that interest me. It relates to the themes in my work – a curiosity in the consciousness of place, mapping and navigating the interrelatedness of memory, identity and place, which is also an investigation into elusiveness and permeability.
Many of my works suggest voyages combined with the element of the intangible, as a way to evoke the underlying processes of human passages of becoming.
The three boat-like installations on exhibition are constructed from fragments of makoros (canoes dug out from the trunks of trees) that were found on a Free State farm, where they were used as decorative plant containers. It was a poignant find if it is considered that its ancestor, the Dufuna Canoe, found in Nigeria and excavated in 1994, was carbon dated as 8000 years old. The Dufuna canoe is concrete evidence of the earliest transportation over waterways and seas, evoking a gentler way of life using indigenous knowledge systems.
The boat-like installations on this exhibition are a continuation of my investigation of the motif of the boat and the meanings it generates in the context of crossings. I am interested in how the boat, as a vehicle, can be a metaphor for the human experiences of transitions. Travelling over water, which is a symbol of the unconscious, a boat has connotations of a safe container transporting the psyche over the treacherous waters of the unknown.
The dugout canoes in my work represent ancient ways of navigation and journey. Once vessels of survival and trade, the decayed fragments of the canoes now embody the stories and histories of the cultures they represent. By repurposing these canoes using a range of paper-making techniques, I seek to highlight the transformative power of materials and the knowledge imbedded in them.
The transformation of material is pivotal to my art practice as can also be seen in the series of paper pulp drawings made on scrim fabric. The paper pulp was made with tearing up discarded documents and educational material from a school in Cape Town. As such, these drawings allow the discarded knowledge to live on in images of the land and its horizons.
Through these works, I aim to create a space for considering alternative ways to navigate this world, a space of contemplation and a place that creates the potential to facilitate connections with everything that exist in the world around us.
