Johan Thom is one of the only practicing full time performance artists in South Africa. He has been a professional performance/installation artist for the past 4 years. Most of his works have been created in various public urban contexts ranging from parks, cultural museums, galleries, tourist attractions and even at home. The works draw from his experience of everyday life in South Africa, as well as from distinctly different cultural traditions (such as those presupposed by performance art groups like the Yomuri Independent, Fluxus, the Viennese Secessionists and various African ritual and ceremonial practices).

By investigating the cathartic aspects of art-making and its reception he wishes to re-imagine the sublime, or what he likes to term ‘the void’: a space that cannot be accounted for by the limited possibilities of human logic and reason. However, for him, ‘the void’ is not a grand meta-text that exists outside the everyday experience of life – it is interwoven with it, continuously threatening to unravel the very fabric of our seemingly structured/meaningful existence. This conflict (between the void and human existence generally) is a shared space of human experience as all cultures have, in their own particular ways, attempted to minimize and to contain it. His work is about the possibility of rupture in this continuum of containment. By attempting to collapse opposing binary codes such as violence/happiness, I/other and purpose/play, he wishes to re-establish open forms of communication along the axis of our shared experience as living beings. Thus, however violent, funny or disturbing his works may appear initially, they are all bound together by the notion of free play, of open communication and ultimately of the consequences resultant from even the most fleeting of interactions between us. Thom (in the catalogue for the Tenth International Computer Arts Festival, 2004, Slovenia) writes that:

“For me the power of art remains its multifarious capacity to reflect and to intervene in the hopes, dreams, fears and desires of society.

Thus far, my works have been incredibly personal, perhaps reflecting something about my country’s troubled past, its difficult present and my own contradictory position in this narrative. The impossibility of ‘speaking myself’ without simultaneously speaking a history of exclusion and of containment has lead me to deliberate questioning of my identity and its seemingly oppositional relationship with the world: I have tried to re-imagine myself by consciously disturbing the various personal, social and ideological agencies which bind me to any single identity. This methodology is present in every work that I have produced for the “Exorcism Series” (a larger body of work currently spanning over the last three-and-a half years of my life, 5 individuals series` of works consisting of approximately 80-90 individual works comprising sculpture, painting, video, installation, performance art"

Thom has exhibited widely including the Venice Biennale 2003, The International Computer Arts Festival in Slovenia, in London on numerous occasions, and in South Africa as part of various group shows, projects and workshops. He has had two solo shows - both receiving critical acclaim – and has been the subject of various art reviews, articles, publications and academic studies. He has also been awarded numerous bursaries, residencies and art awards (including a merit award on the Sasol New Signatures Competition and the PPC Annual Young Sculptors Award).

johanthom@hotmail.com - thomj@techpta.ac.za