Strand of the Ancestral [catalog]

ELEVEN VOICES was a group exhibition of South African and African Diaspora Artists presented by the Deering Estate in Miami curated by Kim Yantis of the Deering Estate and Rosie Gordon-Wallace of the Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator. Artists include: Nicholas Hlobo Anton Kannemeyer Anja Marais Judith Mason Claudette Schreuders Rowan Smith etc. The full catalog of the exhibition is available now online.: VIEW CATALOG From the Catalog: A LONG, THIN STRAND OF THE ANCESTRAL by Anja Marais In 1994 as an art student, I stood in front of a painting and it left a crack in my young mind where the light started to seep in. The Pretoria Museum of Art was particularly quiet that day and I found myself alone in a room with a work by Judith Mason. A quiet escape from external harshness. It was a lush painting. Each brush stroke spread [...]

By |2018-04-05T10:59:37+00:00January 19th, 2018|

Press from ABMB week 2017

WHITEHOT MAGAZINE: Re-Mixing History: African Women Artists at Art Basel Miami Beach 2017 ARCADE PROJECT ZINE:  The Moment We’re In: Art Basel Miami 2017 Begins "Far downtown in a former post office, visual artist Anja Marais’s installation Out of Sight; Out of Mind taps into the zeitgeist with large paste-up portraits of immigrants that play with dual perspectives, twisting sight to examine peripheral views of human history. Her images are pasted into corners and archways in the gutted downtown building, creating warped faces that recall distorted views of immigration and its role in history. Marais photographed Miami Haitians who are the children of immigrants. They sat for her portraits and posed as their immigrant ancestors, each holding a tool of their trade."

By |2018-01-02T12:56:11+00:00January 2nd, 2018|

SFCC exhibition [press clipping]

If you’re interested in the art of here & now, you need to see this show BY ANNE TSCHIDA for the Miami Herald Yet there are several pieces without much color at all that also fit, thematically, into the artistic landscape of South Florida. One is a haunting, site-specific installation, hung from the ceiling, from South-African born Anja Marais. As an immigrant herself, as so many are here, she creates pieces that relate to disenfranchised, disconnected communities. In the suspended ripped and torn panels, in black and white, you can discern a poor small farmhouse and fields. Unlike the collage from Mar which hangs behind it, Marais has created this work not by layering and applying, but by a process called décollage, where she manipulates the initial images by tearing and cutting it, also forming a new, unique perspective by elimination. Inextricable Intertangling, 2017 [...]

By |2017-07-13T08:53:33+00:00July 11th, 2017|

The Codex of the Films and Pictures of Anja Marais: Oneiric Metaphors – by Rosa JH Berland [write-up]

The disquieting allure of Anja Marais’ practice comes from a masterly weaving of mysticism. Formally, the work falls somewhere between the grace of Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget, the shadowy poetry of Surrealist film making, the complex ornateness of Matthew Barney’s films and feminist body art. These intricate worlds are made from handmade sculpture, video, pixilation animation video, and photography. They captivate, one can hardly wait for the next scene or chapter to emerge. Most recently, Marais has embarked on a series of self-titled “visual poems” including a sequence of related projects comprised of moving picture, photography, costumes, hand made sculpture and mixed media. These “poems” take place in natural environments such forests, hills, expanses of grass, or next to a body of water and appear to transcribe memory and experience, particularly that of woman. The stories are often-wordless visual worlds in which secrets are ritually revealed, the [...]

By |2017-07-13T09:28:11+00:00May 2nd, 2017|

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami write-ups for “Intersectionality”

"On Their Shoulders" 2016, Photomontage Mixed Media and Found Objects. 72 in x 48 in x 28 in My  work got mentioned in the press for the "Intersectionality" exhibition curated by Richard Haden: By Phillip Valys from SouthFlorida.com ....The piece calls to mind old-world colonialism and immigration, which is echoed in Anja Marais' installation "The Crossing," where nine pairs of adult and children's dress shoes filled with dirt sit next to an out-of-focus photograph of a muddy cornfield. Although Marais emigrated from South Africa during apartheid, the shoes evoke the current Syrian refugee crisis, Haden says. "When migrants are being forced out of their country to escape oppression, they have to pack your belongings hastily. You leave with the shoes on your feet," Haden says. "It's a dehumanizing process, these journeys from one world to another." Read full article [HERE]. By Anne Tschida for Miami Herald Two installations leave [...]

By |2017-07-11T00:09:17+00:00August 5th, 2016|