Abstract
M.Tech.
My research explores how process, i.e. the physical means of material production, can embody and conceptually signify transformation within personal and public realms. My practical work draws on multiple material sources which I subject to various physical processes in order to produce alteration. These material processes function as metaphors for processes of self-exploration.
In my theoretical argument, I propose speculative connections between my sense of liberation (experienced in the processes of artmaking and through my adoption of instability, dissolution, hybridity and open-endedness as working strategies) and certain socio-political transformations that have occurred in the past decade. Cultural effects of postcolonialism such as hybridity and otherness are used as reference points in my theoretical text, in which I foreground personal narrative as integral to my research design. Ways in which the contemporary South African artist, Penny Siopis similarly engages autobiography as subject matter and working strategy, are explored and interwoven into my discussion.