Biography
Guided by my intuition, I am on a quest to understand more. I seek out synchronicitous connections between the realms of science, philosophy, history and psychology and the related themes of superstition, intuition, heritage and ancestry. Objects laden with scientific and/or spiritual import are often singled out. Second hand books, old maps, a camera obscura, a telescope, the children’s game of snakes and ladders, fertility figures and artefacts, scientific devices and occult apparatus – all these have found their way into my work. The intention of my working process is to tease out hidden meanings, correspondences and signs, exploring the contentious territory between what is seen and what is unseen, known and unknown. It is in this liminal space, between what we know, what we think we know and what we do not yet know, that my working process positions me – Barbara Wildenboer
Barbara Wildenboer is a South African artist that uses a combination of analogue and digital processes to create work that mostly consists of collage, photo- and paper-construction, installation, digitally animated collage works and book arts.
Her trademark ‘altered books’ function as narrative clues, intertexts or ‘subtitles’ accompanying the other works, referring to subject matter ranging from ancient history, archaeology and fractal geometry to psychoanalysis. The altered book series Library of the Infinitesimally Small and Unimaginable Large (2011-present) was inspired by a short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges titled The Library of Babel. In this large-scale ongoing project she uses the library as a metaphor for the universe.
Wildenboer lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa and is represented by galleries in Cape Town, Johannesburg, London, Lisbon and Luanda. In 2007 she obtained a Masters in Fine Art (Cum Laude) from the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The title of her Master’s thesis was Present Absence / Absent Presence and the research was concerned with aspects of melancholy, loss and longing as is embodied by the photographic medium. Before that she completed a BA(Ed) with majors in English literature, Psychology and Pedagogics at the University of Pretoria in 1996 followed by a Bachelor of Visual Arts from UNISA in 2003. From 2009-2016 she was working as the head of the Photography Department at the Cityvarsity College of Creative Arts where she lectured Theory & Discourse and History of Photography.
In 2011 she was nominated and subsequently selected as one of the top 20 finalists for the Sovereign African Arts Award for which she received the Public Choice Prize. She has been awarded several international residencies such as the Darat al Funun exchange residency / Unesco-Aschberg (Amman, Jordan, 2006), the Al Mahatta residency (Birzeit, Palestine, 2009) and the Red De Residencias Artisticas Local (Bogotá, Colombia, 2011), the Rimbun Dahan artist residency (Penang, Malaysia, 2013), L’Ateleier Sur Seine (Fontainebleau, France, 2017), Hannacc (Barcelona, Spain, 2018) and Le Jardin Rouge at the Montresso Foundation (Marrakech Morocco, 2022).
Resume
Education
| 2007 | Master of Fine Art, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa |
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| 2003 | Bachelor of Visual Arts, UNISA, South Africa |
| 1996 | BA (Ed) with majors in English literature, Psychology and Pedagogics, University of Pretoria |
Solo exhibitions
| 2022 | LOOT, This Is Not A White Cube Gallery, Lisbon |
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| 2020 | Super / Natural, Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town |
| 2020 | Retrospective exhibition, Festival artist for the Klein Karoo Arts Festival, Oudshoorn |
| 2020 | Library of the Infinitesimally Small and Unimaginably Large II, XVA Gallery, Dubai |
| 2019 | Folly, Everard Read Gallery, London |
| 2018 | Eros / Thanatos, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg |
| 2017 | The Invisible Gardener, Everard Read/CIRCA, Cape Town |
| 2016 | Mythematics, MContemporary Gallery, Sydney |
| 2015 | Something Rather Than Nothing, The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong |
| 2014 | The Lotus Eaters, The Reservoir Gallery, Oliewenhuis Museum, Bloemfontein William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, North West University Gallery, Potchefstroom, South Africa |
| 2013 | Disjecta Membra, Amelia Johnson Contemporary, Hong Kong |
| 2012 | Canaries in the coalmine, ErdmannContemporary, Cape Town and Aardklop, Potchefstroom |
| 2011 | Library of the infinitesimally small and unimaginably large, ErdmannContemporary, Cape Town |
| 2008 | Present Absence/Absent Presence, ErdmannContemporary, Cape Town |
| 2008 | Vanitas, AVA, Cape Town |
| 2006 | Everyday Alchemy, Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan |
| 2004 | Rites of Passage, AVA, Cape Town |