FIBERWORKS - A CELEBRATION OF SOUTH AFRICAN
FIBER AND TEXTILE ARTISTS

Title: Intertextures

Description: Fibre sculptor Celia de Villiers organically collages fibres and yarns from a foundation of fetishes, which evoke the primal and the postmodern. She embroiders by hand and machine, and weaves together wood and wire. The resulting rich surface textures are dyed using various natural and chemical substances.

Via the fragmentation and layering of textiles, de Villiers seeks to express the repetitive rituals of daily living, growth and decay. Her sculptures and graphics often address post-feminist issues, drawing on ancient myths and modern obsessions concerning women. Through symbols that are universal as well as deeply personal, she communicates her existential experience as a means of making sense of the world.

De Villiers says, ‘Art is a conversation, an experiment between the spiritual and the physical. But it’s not like science. It is more philosophical, like alchemy. The accidents, the imperfections – slashes and stains – speak of human frailty, and the vulnerability of the body in performance.

The artist’s work has featured in many exhibitions worldwide. International companies have commissioned her work. She has been lecturing in Visual Art at the University of South Africa since 2001.

Title: Love Potion

Description: Ancient folklore recommended sewing a mixture of crushed vervain, Southwood and orris-root into a green silk bag on Friday. Pinning the bag to one’s under garments, next to the skin, would secure one’s love.

Celia de Villiers is a visual arts lecturer at the University of South Africa and conducts workshops and community empowerment projects in drawing, painting, sculpture and textile related crafts worldwide.

This artwork is an extension of her research into belief systems, amulets, fetishes and good luck charms.

Title: Disavowal

Description: Contemporary cultural anxieties, desires, and pre-occupations include the often eroticised interface between technology and the flesh. Disavowal refers to bio-technology, cloning, hybrids and the futuristic post human. It is about the undermining of traditional constructs of human identity, evoking dissociating behaviour such as fetishism which includes doubling and disavowal.

The illusionism of the artwork enters into contemporary debates about the aesthetic of delightful horror. It has a sense of aversion-attraction. The tactile qualities and sensual shapes of Disavowal are seductive and are aimed at stimulating the desire to stroke them, but due to the animalistic hybrid forms and slimy 'Gothicised' creatures included in them.

Title: Liminal Rite

Description: The red shawl was made during the last five years of a ten year process of sub-conscious, traumatic and fragmented 'knowing' - a liminal phase of contemplation and mental preparation.

A liminal phase in ones life is a rite of passage and offers an interstice to facilitate a mental shift. Creating the artwork became a meditative, ritualistic and transformative process dependent on visualization and the articulation of situations via reflective thinking. The creation of the shawl became a transitional object in this process of uncovering meaning. I am now free of past constraints and have journeyed into the next phase. The completion of the artwork has been an appropriate ritual of closure.

Celia De Villiers
88 Sekretarisvoel Str
Monumentpark Ext 2
Pretoria
0181

Cell: 0834414979
Phone: 27(0)123472801

Email: 27823050318@vodamail.co.za