'BLOWN'
Belinda Blignaut at blank projectsThrough a varied series of works and actions created and documented over several years, Belinda Blignaut has been processing issues around social constraint and transformation, with the body at the centre of all; an emotional response to a political world.
Adapting available materials and processing immediate surroundings, she hopes to translate the ways we cope. Her work is often body canvas, a quiet visceral investigation into violence through action and documentation.
Surfacing in blown is a desire to resist the effects of institutionalized culture and the constructs of sophistication we have become - how good we are at concealing messiness, the natural body, and intuition.
It is significant that BLOWN is the most extensive showing of Blignaut's work since her absence from the art world for over a decade. Prompted by an experience of typical, everyday South African violence, Blignaut's return to her practice was first signaled by the installation 'Stealing the Words' at YOUNGBLACKMAN. The residue of this and older, seminal works is on exhibition, as well as a more recent survey of her production.
That Blignaut is practicing now, for the first time since the beginnings of this country's democracy, suggests that there is a revived urgency for protest. In her own words, "I've come to believe we have one story to tell and keep finding different ways of telling it."
11 April - 11 May
