Thelma Van Rensburg

Education

Thelma van Rensburg was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1969. She studied and traveled extensively and had an interest in art, but unfortunately went to a Technical High School which meant no art! There, she joined the Drama team and did quite well. In 2000 she acquired her Ba Hons. degree in Psychology at the University of South Africa and in 2007, she acquired her B-Tech Honours Degree in Fine Art from the Tshwane University of Technology. She is currently studying towards a Master of Arts degree at the University of Pretoria.

Career

After school she was really interested in Gymnastics and decided to study a B.A Hons in physical education. She worked for few years and kept studying receiving her B.A Hons in Psychology in 2000, and then she went to Taiwan to work as a teacher. Her co-teachers there called her the PROP Queen as she made the best props as teaching aids. In 2001, she decided to go study art as she still has not found her groove yet. She got married in 2003 and started studying art full-time in 2004. Being married and studying called for some really tough times but she received her Diploma and finished her B tech in 2007 focusing on printmaking and painting. We could say she was a late bloomer. In 2008 things started moving and then she finally found something she was good at and it was digital art. Her thesis focused on the Postmodern Identity with interest in the female form and the ideals that woman are supposed to live up to according to society and the media. Her main means of art making was manipulation of images with Photoshop and this medium allowed her to endless possibilities in art making. She loves what she does and doesn't see herself doing anything else. It has been a long and winding road but now she can call herself an artist.

Work

Throughout her work, she aims to portray the masks that women use in order to be accepted by the contemporary society. These masks become an alternative "skin’, distorting one’s identity". By constantly using masks, women lose themselves in the process, their identity and sense of self becomes trapped in the mask. The mask conceals that which they do not want others to see, thus deceiving others and distorting their concept of self. The concept of masking is seen as a form of ‘Othering’, and also place oneself as other or as masked is already to position oneself in a resistive position, whereby difference is threatening to the logical explanations, habitual practices and unquestioned assumptions of the established order and its defined categories.

Exhibitions

Since 2008, she participated in several group exhibitions, including one at the Fried Contemporary Gallery in Pretoria; Maggie gallery in Centurion; the Gallery at Duncan Yard Pretoria; and the MAP Gallery in Graskop. In 2009, she took part in a group exhibition at Deluxeville Gallery in Woodstock; the Rusten-Vrede Gallery Durbanville in Cape Town; in the Affordable Art Fair at Fried Contemporary Gallery in Pretoria; St Lorient Fashion and Art Gallery in Pretoria; Aardklop Arts Festival in Potchefstroom. She had also a solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Cape Town in September 2009, and she was a finalist in the Ekurhuleni Fine Arts Awards as well as in the Vuleka Sanlam competition in Cape Town the same year. In 2010, her work was showcased at The Gallery at Duncan Yard on many occasions; the Articles and Frames in Pretoria; at the Artcafe@thehub in Centurion; the Gallery 18th Avenue in Pretoria and at the Artspace Warehouse in Johannesburg.

Unfinished Grotesque: September 2011

This work critiques the 'master' painter's gaze on the female form. The term 'master' was applied throughout the history of painting to an elite group of supposed male genii. These collages use images from these 'master' paintings to literally create grotesque female bodies of fetishized body parts. The use of the grotesque signifies the transgressing of boundaries, in which this transgression is a critical feature of the ‘grotesques' relationship with both the beautiful and the sublime. In aesthetic discourse, clear and discreet boundaries are integral to the apprehension of beauty. The grotesque is a 'body in the act of becoming... never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body. The work is thus a transgression of the patriarchal gaze and empowers woman's self portraiture.

Existential Angst

Occasionally, late at night, while trying to sleep and failing, people experience an anxiety of existence, they are aware of their entire body, the entire world, and the whole of reality itself. It's like waking from a dream, or a light going on, or a giant "You are here" sign appearing in the sky. The mere fact that I'm actually real and actually breathing suddenly hits me in the head with a thwack. It leaves me giddy. It causes a brief surge of clammy, bubbling anxiety, like the opening stages of a panic attack. The moment soon passes, but while it lasts it's strangely terrifying.

The Masquerade

The concept of masquerade can be analyzed as an extension of identity, as opposed to the Oxford English dictionary that does not make much distinction between mask, disguise and masquerade in intention or definition. The mask is seen as partial covering; and disguise is full covering. Masquerade in the other hand is explained as deliberate covering. The mask hints; disguise erases from view, and the masquerade overstates. The mask constitutes than an accessory; disguise is a portrait and masquerade is a caricature. Indeed, even in the dictionary definitions, the word 'disguise' appears in all three. Therefore, the words mentioned above: masquerade, mask and disguise share similarities that become obvious 'through dialectic of concealing and revealing'. Masquerade calls attention to such fundamental issues as the nature of identity, the truth of identity, the stability of identity categories and the relationship between supposed identity and its outward manifestations (or essence and appearance). The paradox 'appears to be that it presents truth in the shape of deception, and reveals in the process of concealing'.