Bloemfontein-based sculptor Miné Kleynhans (34) was crowned this year’s Sasol New Signatures art competition winner, being rewarded with a whopping R100 000 in cash.
Granted in addition to this reward is an opportunity to host a solo exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2025.
Kleynhans was awarded the sought-after prize for her installation piece titled Meditations on Resentment.
She was named the winner at a function held on 4 September, alongside other artists such as the runner-up, Tandabantu Nathaniel Jongikhaya Matola, as well as five merit award recipients who went home with a consolation of R10 000 each.
Matola, a Fine Arts student at the Walter Sisulu University (WSU) in the Eastern Cape, was awarded R25 000 for his work titled Ukuncikelela (to hold on or endure).
According to the sponsor, 1 013 submissions were received from across South Africa this year, with 137 outstanding works making it to the final exhibition. The seven prize recipients’ works were voted the best.
Pfunzo Sidogi, chairperson of the competition, has praised the entrants for submitting outstanding work.
“This year’s final judging round was probably the toughest we have facilitated thus far in the five years I have served as the competition’s chairperson,” said Sidogi.
“Among other things, words like ‘subtly compelling,’ ‘poignant,’ ‘technically virtuosic,’ ‘majestic work,’ and ‘wonderful technique’ were used to describe the work.”
Kleynhans’ Meditations on Resentment imagines an intimate, personal ritual that sanctions the experience and expression of resentment. This interactive work invites viewers to engage in a ritual with this secret and suppressed emotion by imaginatively and temporarily lifting the constraints that typically govern how resentment is managed.
When encountering the work, participants are presented with its shiny, indented surface, a brush with a sharpened end, and a bowl of sand. The ritual tasks participants to kneel in front of the work and pour the sand onto the indented surface.
They are then to write their resentments in the sand with the sharpened end of the brush, before sweeping the sand away and out of the closest cavity until the sharp, hard kernel of a brass thorn is revealed.
The winners and finalists’ works of art are part of the Sasol New Signatures exhibition ongoing at the Pretoria Art Museum until Sunday, 3 November.
