Artist Wilna van der Walt, whose exhibition titled, The Old Woman and the Moon: an inner journey in oil, is showing at the UCT Irma Stern Museum.
The old woman and the moon: an inner journey in oil is described by the artist:
I am 57 years old and am following my inner star, which led me back to my birth-ground. I have resolved to tell the story, the journey, of my seeking and survival in the cement jungle, by way of the deeper images of my life.
After the destruction of divorce in the early 1990’s, I had to go back to a career that I found unfulfilling. From my own broken position I soon realized that, not only was I not the only broken one, but my whole world is unforgiving and broken. I turned to the work of CG Jung and discovered that wholeness lies in the depths, and so art came into my life as active imagination.
Right from the start, my goal was not to make a work of art, but rather to experiment with ‘the unknown other’ in my personality. I did not realize at the time that I was doing active imagination, but called it the creative process. I viewed it as a sacred space and felt the need to protect it from outside influences. For that reason I never took art classes, but viewed mistakes and artistic problems as part of the conversation. I solved problems by waiting for the answer to come from the other side. The psyche is a whole universe, and alive.
The artworks relate to one another, they portray the deeper story of my life, and integrating the content will probably take me the rest of my life. The images do not follow chronologically upon each other, but rather weave back and forth over the period of 25 years during which I engaged with this process.
Mythological and alchemical themes can be traced and will be amplified by additional exhibits. At times I consciously engaged with the myth at the time of the creation of the work, but often the deeper connection was only made much later.
This exhibition is developed and put together in book form to be published as The Old Woman and the Moon, an inner journey in oil.
Walkabout with the artist on Sat 21 May at 11am.
WHERE & WHEN: UCT Irma Stern Museum, Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town 7000 until 4 June. Tue-Fri 10h00-167h00, Sat 10h00-14h00. Gated parking in Chapel Road.
The exhibition includes the launch of a book with the same title.
INFO: 021 685 5686 visit
