Marlene Steyn, South-Africa
The Magic Carpenters, 2014.
Statement:
Through my work, I aim to open up and stir the human ego (sense of self). If the ego is an egg, I guess one can say that I break it and scramble it to make many side dishes.
Moonys Downside with extra time she could have made side dishes.
In my paintings I usually start with my selves (I say this to emphasise the many selves I think the self hosts); placing and painting her in a contained narrative and then expanding these selves to collide with objects and subjects surrounding them.
The Trainers…and knees, 2015.
S/he is usually in the company of her mothers, lovers, sisters and best friends, and all of these people form her as s/he forms them; each one bringing out a different self in her. The characters are simultaneously doppelgangers and daughters; look-alike cannibals and sisters. Visually I had to find a way to express this interwoven state, and using for instance the limbs, orifices, body hair and tongues of the selves, I attempt to create a clustered moiety that depicts the complex fluidity of being.
*A note: I use the term s/he to refer to an in-between sense of self that is not fully female or male. My figures initially appear as women, but on closer inspection one can see that body hair and facial features attempt to partially unsettle this.(published in Between 10 and 5 site)
Mad Love, 2016.
About:
Marlene Steyn’s (1989) work swaps grace for wit. Tropical foliage and languid, nude female forms feature heavily – a Gauginesque evocation – but the mixed media artistdisrupts the art-historical discourse. The inclusion of playdough makes her installations derisive rather than a dedication. The figures are prone and prostrate rather than posing; canon turns into wallpaper with the repetition of these forms in unlikely shades of purple and blue. There is no romance.(text ArtAfrica site)
