Anni Snyman
is an artist from Johannesburg who works in various media,
from orchestrating ‘constellations’ of different disciplines and large
scale nature installations to small water drawings. She tells us about the
origins of the Karoo Geoglyph project.
“The
concept for the Karoo Geoglyph Project originated in the Disobedience
discussions in 2008 between Eugenie Grobler and myself. In 2009 my
brother, PC Janse van Rensburg and I collaborated with a group of friends to
create the Earth Siren at Africa Burn, and since then the project has evolved. We
created the temporary Riverine Rabbit drawing in Richmond in 2012. It took six
years to bring the right team of volunteers and supporters together, find the
right place in the Karoo, and create the first permanent work – the Snake Eagle
Thinking Path.”
Anni is
deeply concerned about the threat of destruction that faces the natural world
of the Karoo, and wishes to make a contribution to the protection of its people
as well as this habitat. “There is also a sense of hopeless loneliness when one
faces our voracious consumer culture, with almost no way out of the conundrum
of being part of the destruction that one wishes to stop. For me, the community
that forms around the making of such an artwork keeps that loneliness somewhat
at bay, and I keep working at it in the hope that in this collaborative
creative space we will sometimes glimpse a way to be better earthlings."
Anni Snyman
deep in thought, laying out the grid. Photo
Credit: Janet Botes
PC Janse van Rensburg is an architect and part of a Cape
Town art group that comes together to paint each Monday evening at Jan van
Riebeeck Primary School. At the end of each year they hold a Group Exhibition. Choosing
oils as his medium, PC finds it “a two way conversation as the medium actively
responds to the artist - I look for the unexpected that is revealed through the
layering of paint.” So what drew PC from oils to land art as well?
“After the Pordenone Italy Land Art Biennale, Anni asked me
to assist her organise the first Land Art Biennale in Plettenburg Bay, South
Africa. I worked with her on various land art projects – and then came the
Snake Eagle Thinking Path. I assisted in setting up the grid for the design and
was involved in the logistics of producing lime for the dots that make up the
path. I see the Snake Eagle Thinking Path as a practical way of making the public aware of land art in nature and,
by using that which is on site, to create awareness of the need to protect
the Karoo environment.”
PC Janse van Rensburg in oils, by
PC
#Site_Specific Geoglyphs #KarooGeoglyphs #SnakeEagleThinkingPath
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