“This exhibition by Nicoliene Esterhuizen has been so exciting for me to curate in partnership with the artist who based in Cape Town. The work has many levels and her drawings and sculptures are fabulous. It is her first solo show and the venue is amazing allowing inside and outside excitement,” says Brown.
Artist Statement:
“An early representation of a sleeping woman is the Sleeping Lady from the Hal Saflieni burial site (hypogeum) on the island of Malta. It is a terra-cotta figurine, 12 centimeters in length, and depicts a woman lying on her side on a couch or bed. She is shown wearing an embroidered skirt. In Neolithic times (roughly 5,000 years ago), the dead were buried in small caves dug out of the rock. As she is shown lying down on a bed (as opposed to the more usual foetal position), she can be interpreted as a type of “incubation” until the next life.
Priests or priestesses would sleep in some isolated or sacred place, generally a cave or a grotto, and afterward make predictions based on their dreams. People also slept at shrines or ancestral tombs to be healed of sickness.
It is thought that certain rituals were created as an attempt to help communities engage with their understanding of day-to-day life, for healing, and for forecasting events.
The transition from being asleep to being awake often passes through a dream period. This period is often ritualistic in nature — unfolding to reveal what may be lost in the gap between perception and reality, and folding again in order to conceal.
My works involve the unfolding process of drawing and can be seen as an attempt to see and better understand the world and events around me.
Drawing becomes an act of opening up to the unknown as well as a caring appreciation of what is known. It is between the projections we make, and the memories we have, that we try to be more clear about what we see and what we think we see.
Drawing is thus an anticipatory representation of reality and memory, subject and object.”
The exhibition takes place at the Quoin Rock wine Estate in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, and runs from December 2, 2021, to February 28, 2022.
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