Marjorie Human

I’m 26 years old and stay in Bloemfontein in the Free State. I’m currently working on a MAFA, and manage a community based arts and culture project from the University of the Free State.

Paint is for me a sensual and tactile substance, with that “romantic” trail attached to it-something a lot of people will criticize as being old fashioned, but something that I find intriguing. I build my surfaces up, with paint and layers of images, to create something reminding one of embroidered and beaded cloth: things normally associated with practices of craft rather of easel painting. I also employ “craft” methods, copying, repeating, adding and embellishing rather than representing “something” . To me enjoyment of the process is just as important as the end result.

The two main ingredients of my work are pattern and painting. I use surface patterns with ambiguous identities: such as African cloth or Victorian rose fabric, as inspiration. I fuse these with other serialistic images belonging to the interwoven pattern of mass-culture. Using these found pattern motifs and images to create hybrid surfaces, I explore my own identity as a “European African”.  My layered surfaces look utopian and beautiful, but it can also become too much, and suggest an irony: a sense of uncomfort underneath the surface.

Pattern is a way for me to explore representation in an age where nothing is original, and even the medium painting has become a hybrid creature, combining abstraction with figuration and easel practise with methods breaking away from it.  Patterns (such as textiles and wallpaper) can have abstract as well as figurative elements.  Patterns are often not seen as the  “original”, and interestingly the patterns and the meanings connected to it change all the time.

Marjorie has been the Chairperson for Free State regional Committee of VANSA (The Visual Arts Network of South- Africa) since 2006. She has co-curated a number of exhibitions, more recently the Artists in Schools Pilot Project Free State Exhibition, JSG Gallery (Bloemfontein). She has also participated in a variety of exhibitions such as the Sasol New Signatures, Absa Atelier, Macufe Mangaung African Cultural Festival, Fragment (Art Gallery Centenary Complex, UFS) and the Volksblad Kunstefees, Odeion, UFS. She is currently the project manager for the Artists in Schools Project, she has lectured drawing to students at the Planet Pixel School of Advertising, taught Art Classes for adults and children at the Art House (Oliewenhuis museum) and Oranje Meisieskool she is also a part time junior lecturer for practical art sessions at the University of the Free State. 

Information courtesy of the artist.