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from the Woods to the Soil is a solo exhibition by Jonathan van der Walt, which was first developed and exhibited at the William Humphreys Art Gallery in March 2024 following him being awarded the WHAG Artist-in-Residence.

The body of work offers an introspective journey into the complexities of white African identity and an interrogation of heritage, culture and belonging in a postcolonial South African context. As an English-speaker with an Afrikaans surname, he never related to the Afrikaner identity, nor has any direct familial connection to Europe with many generations before him born and raised in South Africa, as he was. As a result, he has felt culturally unfulfilled within a culturally rich country and struggles to find pride in symbols supposedly reflective of his heritage.

Against the backdrop of National Heritage Day, and its media-driven associations with National Braai Day, van der Walt embarks on a quest to critically interrogate the act of braaiing in order to unearth a greater personal significance to this routine practice, likening it to a ritualistic engagement as opposed to a commercial gimmick, and in the process, develop a revised and renewed understanding of it as a contemporary cultural practice of self-discovery.

Through an exhibition of multidisciplinary artworks, van der Walt navigates the intersections of decoloniality and postdigital art practice, exposing a raw and vulnerable process of difficult questioning. His approach utilises the braai not only as an art medium but also as a muse and a tool for meaning-making. Its seductive forms, textures, compositions, smells and sounds become a subject and means in creating the work, and the use of both digital and traditional sculpting techniques act as a metaphor of this dialogue between the contemporary self and ancestral heritage. At the heart of the exhibition lies a reflection on the transitory nature of white African identity, constantly in flux, as both victims and instigators of mass dislocation and socio-cultural disruption. Colonial powers saw Africa as a continent free for the taking, and ‘scrambled’ for claim to its land, minerals and resources, which has still to this day left a lasting legacy of political, economic and cultural unrest and conflict as the continent struggles to rebuild itself under Western structures and borders.

Most of the wood used for braaiing are alien invasive species; these reference this colonial past, a (family) tree, alien to this land, but rooted in its soil. Braaiing, and the burning of wood, in this context, becomes the acknowledgment of these roots and the stripping away of the foreign ‘otherness’, leaving in its place something more inclusive than intrusive, ash to fertilize the soil.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jonathan van der Walt [b. 1991] is a visual artist based in Gqeberha, South Africa, with a focus in sculpture. In 2013 he received his Honours degree in Fine Art Sculpture (cum laude) at Nelson Mandela University and went on to receive his Masters in 2017. Currently, Jonathan is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at Nelson Mandela University, lecturing into various undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Fine Art, sculpture and interdisciplinary studies. In addition, he holds the role of the gallery manager & curator of the Department’s Bird Street Gallery, as well as oversees the newly established 3D Printing Lab for the School of Visual and Performing Arts.

As a practising artist, he has exhibited in many group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has been a multiple national finalist in the L’Atelier, PPC Imaginarium and Sasol New Signatures competitions. He participated in the Luciano Benneton Imago Mundi Small Canvas project in 2014-15, exhibiting in Venice, Rome and New York. In 2021-22, he was involved in the Through Our Eyes exchange partnership, exhibiting at The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum and The Ritz Art Museum in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2017, he had his first solo exhibition at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town. He is the recipient of the William Humphreys Art Gallery’s Artist-in-Residence for 2024 which resulted in his second solo exhibition “from the Woods to the Soil”, exhibited at the William Humphreys Art Gallery in March/May 2024. In June 2024, he co-curated the cross-gallery exhibition Land/Lines with Uthando Baduza, which was on the National Arts Festival’s Main Curated Programme. His work sits in the Imago Mundi South Africa Collection, the collection of the NMM Art Museum and the William Humphreys Art Gallery.

His artmaking is interdisciplinary, utilising various mediums and processes from bronze and resin casting, found materials, video and photography, to design, illustration and installations. Recently, his interest has been in the digital sphere, incorporating 3D digital modeling and 3D printing technologies into traditional sculptural practice. His current practice-based research adopts a postcolonial lens, analysing the intersections of decoloniality and postdigital sculptural practice to explore white African identity.