Inspired by organizations like CIVA, artway.eu, Morphe Arts and The Rabbit Room, South African artists have realised the need for a place where artists can think deeply and come together and dialogue about faith.
Ydi Carstens
Ydi is a freelancer and artist with painting as main discipline. She grew up drawing, making music and reading and her supportive parents encouraged her delving into the arts. Her parents' ministry in the URC (a previously segregated reformed church in South Africa) played a big role in her upbringing and her thoughts on poverty, politics and faith.
Ydi enrolled in a BA of Fine Arts at Stellenbosch University where many facets of her world were challenged. Unsure about Western Art education and confused about her faith she headed off to Kampala, East-Africa for postgraduate studies. This led to even more questions but also to a deepening in her art practice. The complexity of Christianity, history, and art in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to interest her.
After her studies Ydi visited the English L’Abri community where the warm hospitality and imaginative environment re-established her faith in Christian orthodoxy. In Stellenbosch her artistic career gradually grew, taking part in modest group shows and entering competitions. It was during this time that she attended her first Artists’ Gathering and was introduced to like-minded thinkers on culture, theology and the arts.
Classical music and her outdoorsy husband, August, keeps her sane among the many challenges facing the SA context.
Favourite authors
C.S. Lewis
G.K Chesterton
Leo Tolstoy
John Ruskin
Calvin and Hobbes
Fiddlers and Afflictions – joy and suffering in the work of Marc Chagall
Seeking for ‘mentors in hope’ in the troubling times in South Africa and abroad made me reflect on some of the ways Chagall seems to brave despair.
Unleavened
Hoping to offer a Christian perspective on the growing discourse within African Contemporary art, the ‘Unleavened’ exhibition was imagined as a place of restoration but also of provocation. The theme Leaven provided a metaphor “through which to view the work of young artists as they explore the presence and impact of culture, gender, politics and religion in their lives today”.
Voicing Creation’s Praise
Voicing Creation’s Praise (1991) is a highly detailed and staccato piece of writing, a bit like a Beethoven Scherzo. Jeremy Begbie is known for his writing and lecturing in theology and the arts and is a professor at the Duke University Divinity School. He also studied music and is an accomplished musician.
Of Past and Future Wrought
Elbie Visser’s oil series titled Fragmented heroes speak about ruins and decay, but not in the dialect of the sublime and Romantic that is so typically associated with it. The series of 5 paintings were exhibited at a group exhibition titled Soma as part of a 40 Stones exhibition at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda.
Artists in Community
Gathering faith-based artists into a community for discourse, dialogue and practice in the arts is a liberating and life-giving venture