“Growing in Place is a series that explores the notion of staying in one place. Due to the isolation of the last year, I have been exploring the up and downhill battles which happen when there is a lack of movement in life – both physically and emotionally. Being stuck in place on one hand, and attempting to grow into the person I want to be. This body of work contains a waxing and waning of feelings towards being stuck – in my house, and also in Johannesburg.
There is Little Thunder Clouds: Johannesburg Summer I, an ode to the beauty of Johannesburg and the thundershowers, a yearly cleansing of the city. The dark billowing clouds blow in from late September every year, frightening and thrilling, echoing through the city walls after months of dry weather and ugly dust-filled skies. There is also Overgrown: There’s a Stranger in my Eyes Again, a compilation of the frustrations of being stuck somewhere, forced to grow into cracks and crevices – any spaces that are hospitable for life (while still cowering in fear of viral death) - eventually not recognising oneself.
Like moss, we have to grow into difficult spaces – wherever and whenever we can. This is also the root message of the Undergrowth Miniatures. Both these artworks are products of the frustrations and happiness of being forced to stay, when running wild is preferred. Of starting new things when everything else has to stop. The miniatures placed in a web, tangling with each other over time, there is endless space for new combinations when taking what I have and putting things together. We Grow Accustomed To The Dark, a peace-making with growing despite standing still.” – Odette Graskie

Welcome to a short interlude, a moment outside your main mission.
Ring the bell to start.

This body of work is an ode to uncertainty.

Within the making process, all the work felt like me trying to answer a different question every time, each work leading to more and more questions. The tunnels, the embroidery, the hanging paper works are diaphanous, each one more see-through than the previous, each one an attempt at playing with the very specificity of the solo gallery space’s large windows on one side.
These pieces, while separate, thread together in this space and become site-specific attempts at embracing the light and the location. The solo gallery space located at the end - the last step in exploring the gallery, has also inspired the idea of the Side Quest. A short interlude, beyond the main world of the gallery, but also beyond the main mission of the viewers. Side Quest dives into the theme of uncertainty, of playing until I find an answer to some of my questions. Of never really knowing those answers. The game set up for viewers is an attempt to convey this uncertainty, sitting in discomfort and finding joy in the exploration itself. These questions, a play on the academic research question grappled with in my previous body of work, ask things like “how can someone feel this?”, “where do these tunnels lead?”

The answers might be entirely obvious, but can also be as obscure as the player wants it to be. In their journey through the space, I hope that my players can embrace this obscurity.
They can move through the tunnel-like curation which indicates the journey of this state of knowing and not knowing, this fun in-between, the side quest.

Welcome to a short interlude, a moment outside your main mission.
Ring the bell to start.

This body of work is an ode to uncertainty.

Within the making process, all the work felt like me trying to answer a different question every time, each work leading to more and more questions. The tunnels, the embroidery, the hanging paper works are diaphanous, each one more see-through than the previous, each one an attempt at playing with the very specificity of the solo gallery space’s large windows on one side.
These pieces, while separate, thread together in this space and become site-specific attempts at embracing the light and the location. The solo gallery space located at the end - the last step in exploring the gallery, has also inspired the idea of the Side Quest. A short interlude, beyond the main world of the gallery, but also beyond the main mission of the viewers. Side Quest dives into the theme of uncertainty, of playing until I find an answer to some of my questions. Of never really knowing those answers. The game set up for viewers is an attempt to convey this uncertainty, sitting in discomfort and finding joy in the exploration itself. These questions, a play on the academic research question grappled with in my previous body of work, ask things like “how can someone feel this?”, “where do these tunnels lead?”

The answers might be entirely obvious, but can also be as obscure as the player wants it to be. In their journey through the space, I hope that my players can embrace this obscurity.
They can move through the tunnel-like curation which indicates the journey of this state of knowing and not knowing, this fun in-between, the side quest.

Welcome to a short interlude, a moment outside your main mission.
Ring the bell to start.

This body of work is an ode to uncertainty.

Within the making process, all the work felt like me trying to answer a different question every time, each work leading to more and more questions. The tunnels, the embroidery, the hanging paper works are diaphanous, each one more see-through than the previous, each one an attempt at playing with the very specificity of the solo gallery space’s large windows on one side.
These pieces, while separate, thread together in this space and become site-specific attempts at embracing the light and the location. The solo gallery space located at the end - the last step in exploring the gallery, has also inspired the idea of the Side Quest. A short interlude, beyond the main world of the gallery, but also beyond the main mission of the viewers. Side Quest dives into the theme of uncertainty, of playing until I find an answer to some of my questions. Of never really knowing those answers. The game set up for viewers is an attempt to convey this uncertainty, sitting in discomfort and finding joy in the exploration itself. These questions, a play on the academic research question grappled with in my previous body of work, ask things like “how can someone feel this?”, “where do these tunnels lead?”

The answers might be entirely obvious, but can also be as obscure as the player wants it to be. In their journey through the space, I hope that my players can embrace this obscurity.
They can move through the tunnel-like curation which indicates the journey of this state of knowing and not knowing, this fun in-between, the side quest.

Welcome to a short interlude, a moment outside your main mission.
Ring the bell to start.

This body of work is an ode to uncertainty.

Within the making process, all the work felt like me trying to answer a different question every time, each work leading to more and more questions. The tunnels, the embroidery, the hanging paper works are diaphanous, each one more see-through than the previous, each one an attempt at playing with the very specificity of the solo gallery space’s large windows on one side.
These pieces, while separate, thread together in this space and become site-specific attempts at embracing the light and the location. The solo gallery space located at the end - the last step in exploring the gallery, has also inspired the idea of the Side Quest. A short interlude, beyond the main world of the gallery, but also beyond the main mission of the viewers. Side Quest dives into the theme of uncertainty, of playing until I find an answer to some of my questions. Of never really knowing those answers. The game set up for viewers is an attempt to convey this uncertainty, sitting in discomfort and finding joy in the exploration itself. These questions, a play on the academic research question grappled with in my previous body of work, ask things like “how can someone feel this?”, “where do these tunnels lead?”

The answers might be entirely obvious, but can also be as obscure as the player wants it to be. In their journey through the space, I hope that my players can embrace this obscurity.
They can move through the tunnel-like curation which indicates the journey of this state of knowing and not knowing, this fun in-between, the side quest.

Welcome to a short interlude, a moment outside your main mission.
Ring the bell to start.

This body of work is an ode to uncertainty.

Within the making process, all the work felt like me trying to answer a different question every time, each work leading to more and more questions. The tunnels, the embroidery, the hanging paper works are diaphanous, each one more see-through than the previous, each one an attempt at playing with the very specificity of the solo gallery space’s large windows on one side.
These pieces, while separate, thread together in this space and become site-specific attempts at embracing the light and the location. The solo gallery space located at the end - the last step in exploring the gallery, has also inspired the idea of the Side Quest. A short interlude, beyond the main world of the gallery, but also beyond the main mission of the viewers. Side Quest dives into the theme of uncertainty, of playing until I find an answer to some of my questions. Of never really knowing those answers. The game set up for viewers is an attempt to convey this uncertainty, sitting in discomfort and finding joy in the exploration itself. These questions, a play on the academic research question grappled with in my previous body of work, ask things like “how can someone feel this?”, “where do these tunnels lead?”

The answers might be entirely obvious, but can also be as obscure as the player wants it to be. In their journey through the space, I hope that my players can embrace this obscurity.
They can move through the tunnel-like curation which indicates the journey of this state of knowing and not knowing, this fun in-between, the side quest.

I always feel sorry for rooms with too-small windows. I want a room with light spilling in, air flowing, freshness dripping off the windowpanes. That is the easiest place for me to breathe. If I were a place, that is the where I would be.

I’ve been wondering what my windows would show, if I were a room. My work has become a window; my drawings openings to the world outside of me. Prisms of back and forth, between me and you, you and me. A push and pull. Your outside, marked with that inner life carried by the face. My inside – my perception, framing, projection – moving through the mechanisms of the outer – hands following eyes across the page.

When I draw, we become the windows. Inside life reflected on mottled panes. I imagine the inner world carried from hints gleaming through the surface. Some windows are mirrors. A distant, less distant, distortion – wherein I can find pieces of belonging. When I draw, you become the mirrors – I am hopelessly searching for myself by finding another.

I will draw windows, to find you, to find the world, to find me.

For now, I am a room, light spilling in.

I always feel sorry for rooms with too-small windows. I want a room with light spilling in, air flowing, freshness dripping off the windowpanes. That is the easiest place for me to breathe. If I were a place, that is the where I would be.

I’ve been wondering what my windows would show, if I were a room. My work has become a window; my drawings openings to the world outside of me. Prisms of back and forth, between me and you, you and me. A push and pull. Your outside, marked with that inner life carried by the face. My inside – my perception, framing, projection – moving through the mechanisms of the outer – hands following eyes across the page.

When I draw, we become the windows. Inside life reflected on mottled panes. I imagine the inner world carried from hints gleaming through the surface. Some windows are mirrors. A distant, less distant, distortion – wherein I can find pieces of belonging. When I draw, you become the mirrors – I am hopelessly searching for myself by finding another.

I will draw windows, to find you, to find the world, to find me.

For now, I am a room, light spilling in.