Bronwyn Katz South African, b. 1993
|garu |’amiros, 2022
salvaged bedspring, pot scourers, spirits of salt, and wire
185 x 140 x 25 cm
Exhibited in the 2022 Venice Biennale ‘The Milk of Dreams’ - which was named after a book by Carrington herself - Bronwyn Katz explores the idea of land as a...
Exhibited in the 2022 Venice Biennale ‘The Milk of Dreams’ - which was named after a book by Carrington herself - Bronwyn Katz explores the idea of land as a vessel for memory and trauma. Through her multidisciplinary practice, encompassing sculpture, installation, video, and performance, the artist reflects on place or space as lived experience, examining how land holds and communicates the memory of its past occupation.
Using found natural materials like iron ore, alongside repurposed man-made objects such as foam mattresses and bed springs, Katz’s process is guided by storytelling and intuition. Her sculptures conceptually engage with the political circumstances of their creation, embodying acts of resistance that highlight the social constructs and boundaries that shape our environments. For Katz, abstraction serves as a counterpoint to direct representation, offering her work a space for multiple interpretations. Her minimalism engages with early abstract art forms, drawing on traditional methods of mark-making and storytelling that precede Western modernism.
“While she is driven by formal concerns expressed in an abstract, minimal language, her wire works paint evocative and specific stories. [...] Katz’s ongoing use of found mattress springs and other household materials refers to domestic life – specifically the intimate space of the bed, which is often the site for conception, birth, and death.”
(- Melanie Kress, Curator and Writer, ‘The Milk of Dreams’ Venice Biennale, 2022)
In ‘|garu |’amiros’, like in other several sculptures, Katz intertwines coiled springs with vibrant plastic pot scourers, thoughtfully arranging them to emphasize tonal transitions and a visual language. Spread across the springs to create delicate, protruding mounds, the fragility of the scourers contrasts with their powerful symbolism. “Scourers speak to labour, the expectation and normalisation of the black body at work, scrubbing and cleaning. A signifier of blackness, they conjure up the derogatory phrase ‘hair you can scour pots with’, which attests to one of the many ways in which blackness is judged by superficial attributes.” (White Cube, catalogue of ‘I turn myself into a star and visit my loved ones in the sky’)
Bronwyn Katz’s work shares a connection with Surrealism’s interest in exploring the subconscious and the symbolic potential of everyday objects. Like Surrealists, Katz transforms ordinary materials into compositions that evoke deeper psychological and cultural meanings. Her use of abstraction and tactile forms, combined with such potent symbolism, mirrors the Surrealist technique of elevating the mundane to the realm of the uncanny, inviting a multivalent interpretation that disrupts conventional understandings of space, identity, and memory.
Using found natural materials like iron ore, alongside repurposed man-made objects such as foam mattresses and bed springs, Katz’s process is guided by storytelling and intuition. Her sculptures conceptually engage with the political circumstances of their creation, embodying acts of resistance that highlight the social constructs and boundaries that shape our environments. For Katz, abstraction serves as a counterpoint to direct representation, offering her work a space for multiple interpretations. Her minimalism engages with early abstract art forms, drawing on traditional methods of mark-making and storytelling that precede Western modernism.
“While she is driven by formal concerns expressed in an abstract, minimal language, her wire works paint evocative and specific stories. [...] Katz’s ongoing use of found mattress springs and other household materials refers to domestic life – specifically the intimate space of the bed, which is often the site for conception, birth, and death.”
(- Melanie Kress, Curator and Writer, ‘The Milk of Dreams’ Venice Biennale, 2022)
In ‘|garu |’amiros’, like in other several sculptures, Katz intertwines coiled springs with vibrant plastic pot scourers, thoughtfully arranging them to emphasize tonal transitions and a visual language. Spread across the springs to create delicate, protruding mounds, the fragility of the scourers contrasts with their powerful symbolism. “Scourers speak to labour, the expectation and normalisation of the black body at work, scrubbing and cleaning. A signifier of blackness, they conjure up the derogatory phrase ‘hair you can scour pots with’, which attests to one of the many ways in which blackness is judged by superficial attributes.” (White Cube, catalogue of ‘I turn myself into a star and visit my loved ones in the sky’)
Bronwyn Katz’s work shares a connection with Surrealism’s interest in exploring the subconscious and the symbolic potential of everyday objects. Like Surrealists, Katz transforms ordinary materials into compositions that evoke deeper psychological and cultural meanings. Her use of abstraction and tactile forms, combined with such potent symbolism, mirrors the Surrealist technique of elevating the mundane to the realm of the uncanny, inviting a multivalent interpretation that disrupts conventional understandings of space, identity, and memory.