FINE ART
Sasol New Signatures winner inspired by Knysna's devastation and renewal
'I knew I had to capture the emotion of time. It’s only a year on and already there’s hardly a trace of the fire left'
When the Sasol New Signatures winners are announced annually and the exhibition opens to the public, the work always captures a zeitgeist. The winner in 2018, Jessica Storm Kapp, 22, from Stellenbosch won the coveted award for her rammed-earth columns and embedded-object installation Mapping Time. Personal stories with a universal message was 2018’s focus. Kapp’s work comments on the disastrous Knysna fires. As a student in Stellenbosch, she felt cut off from her home during the disaster. "I knew I had to capture the emotion of time," she says. So she collected soil, charred objects and other traces of the fire, which all found their way into the winning work. "It’s only a year on and already there’s hardly a trace of the fire left," Kapp says. This was her attempt to illustrate concepts such as loss, trace, place attachment and reflection.
She is completing her BA (Visual Arts) at Stellenbosch University. Through various printmaking techniques, photography, sculpture and inst...
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