Miné KLEYNHANS (34)
Bloemfontein
Meditations on resentment
Cherrywood, brass, sand and found objects
70 cm x 43 cm x 74 cm
Biography
Miné Kleynhans is employed at the University of the Fee State’s Art Gallery as the Project Coordinator. As an artist, art project manager, and facilitator, she has participated in various experimental, developmental and large-scale international creative projects. Most notably as a lead artist in collaboration with Alex Rinsler in the It’s My City project (www.itsmycity.co.za) during the Vrystaat Art Festival 2016. She graduated with a Master in Fine Art (Cum Laude) from the University of the Free State in 2017 and was an artist in residence at Brashnar Creative Project, Macedonia, Eastern Europe, in 2018. She exhibits regularly and has received various acknowledgements for her work.
Synopsis
Meditations on Resentment
Meditations on Resentment imagines an intimate personal ritual that sanctions the experience and expression of resentment. The work contemplates resentment as a pattern of thought and emotion that excavates, polishes, and sharpens. This interactive work invites the viewer to engage in a ritual with this secret and suppressed emotion by imaginatively and temporarily lifting the constraints that resentment is ordinarily dealt with. When encountering the artwork, prospective participants are presented with the shiny, indented surface of the work, a brush with a sharpened end and a bowl of sand. The ritual that the artwork imagines tasks the participant to kneel in front of the work and pour the sand out onto the indented surface. They are to write their resentments in the sand with the sharpened end of the brush, then sweep the sand away and out of the closest cavity until the sharp, hard kernel of a brass thorn is revealed. Participants will repeat this ritualistic activity while meditating on the reasons for their irate state as many times as their resentment requires, starting at the top of the work and working the sand downwards so that it can be collected in the brass bowl again. In time the defacement caused by the scratched words will create a stigmata-like impression of partially revealed resentments.
Miné Kleynhans Winner Sasol New Signatures 2024
Q&A
Tell us what your reaction was when you received the news that your work had be selected?
My heart started thumping in my chest when I heard that I was a finalist – I was very happy and excited.
Is this the first time you have entered the competition? If so why and if not how many times and why is this competition an important one for you?
I have entered before in 2019. My work was selected at the regional entry point, but didn’t make it further than that. The Sasol New Signatures Art Competition is important because it has such a large national reach. It brings emerging artistic voices together from all over the country and provides ample support that would significantly impact winners future careers. It is very encouraging to have been selected as a finalist.
Tell us a little about your artistic journey up until the point of entering Sasol New Signatures 2024?
I studied Fine Arts it the UFS where I also completed my Master’s degree. After that I continued to create new work, exhibit, enter competitions and apply for residency whenever I could. As is probably the case for most artists that are also employed, I have only been able to create work very sporadically and I feel that my own conceptual language had only very recently started to emerge and solidify.
Who has had the biggest influence on your career as an artist to date?
I have been very lucky to have Willem Boshoff as a co-supervisor and I have been privileged to get know him and the way that he works over several years. The depth and scale of his artistic thinking is rather daunting, but is has also made a lasting impression on me.
Tell us a little about why you created the piece you submitted?
I am interested in articulating suppressed, unnoticed or hidden things that shape or are shaped by people’s habitual thinking and emotional patterns. In the case of this particular work I was party to situations and discussions in which ‘resentment’ carried a special emphasis. It is an emotional state that is hard to admit to and difficult to share openly. It has a underhanded – semi-conscious quality and yet it is such a strong current in peoples’ lives. ‘Sanctioning’ the expression of resentment felt like a dangerous thing to do, but it is also something that has a strangle hold on your emotional lives and should be spoken about.
Tell us about your preferred medium/s …and why?
I have been using solid wood, copper and brass in my work recently, but I have also used many other mediums. I think I enjoy wood because it also seems to ‘reveal’ itself to you (the grain) and you have to adapt the ‘shape’ of your concept to it – which makes the work stronger in my opinion.
When people view your work – what reaction/response are you hoping to create?
I really hope that it makes people want to physically interact with it. Maybe even that is has some kind of seductive quality in that sense. Although it might be difficult to navigate in a gallery setting, I did create it with the hope that it would facilitate a real ‘ritual’ and prompt people to engage with these less charitable or forgiving aspects of themselves.
Why do you think your work was chosen as one of the winning works?
It’s hard to guess, but I think that I gave every aspect of the installation a great deal of thought. What resentment feels like – it’s sharp, shiny and hard – for instance, and how it will make you feel to kneel on the cushion to interact with it. I hope that they felt that it is very thoroughly thought through and perhaps a bit unusual.
How would winning this competition change your life?
It will definitely change the way that I see my artistic practise and myself as an artist in a very real, exciting but perhaps even scary way. I think that is will only dawn on me much later.
Which South African artists do you admire and why?
That’s a very hard question to answer since there are so many. I already mentioned Willem Boshoff but Bronwyn Katz and Sonya Rademeyer come to mind as artists that seem to listen to deep, ephemeral currents underneath the way things are, which I admire.
Do you have an idea of what your solo exhibition would look like if you were crowned the overall winner?
I suppose that I do. I can imagine filling the gallery space with a series of ‘game like’ sculptural artworks that people need to ‘play’ or interact with. I would love to challenge the scale that I normally work in and create some bigger pieces.
Anything else you would like to add?
Just that I realise that owe a lot to the friends and family that have supported me to create art – from sharing workshop space, problem solving difficult technical things and giving me constructive feedback when I asked for it. I am really very grateful for that.
