REALIGN - 2025

Artist statement: Emma Willemse

The need to change the way that we interact with the world around us has never been so urgent. The climate crisis, as well as ongoing wars causing massive displacement of people from their homes, prompts us to rethink our existence and how we relate to the world. Artmaking creates a site where the move away from a human-centered to a kincentric¹ worldview can be investigated and imagined, and where the connections between human and non-human ecologies can be explored. In ReAlign, I invite viewers to reflect on the alternative knowledge systems that inform our understanding of kinship. These systems often exist outside mainstream narratives, rooted in ancestral wisdom and collective memory.

As a former librarian, I am interested in how knowledge is acquired and disseminated and am critical of the pre-conceived assumptions underlying dominant knowledge systems. In my art practice, I have endeavored to question and disrupt the overriding knowledge systems through bookmaking, printmaking, installations, and videos. I have also engaged with those things that cannot be explained or known through the prevailing knowledge, such as the intense experience of grief when a tree is uprooted. As sentient beings and sites of alternative knowledge, the loss of a tree is similar to the loss of an ecological system.

The tree stump that is used as a reference in the Elegy for a deceased tree – series is a remnant of a found uprooted tree that shows evidence of having gone through a fire. I have used monotype printmaking techniques to create a series of commemorative ‘portraits’ of this tree stump. By adding cotton stitching into the paper, as a way of traversing the topographic structure and mapping the surface of the stump, I attempt to reconnect with and honor the memories of the deceased tree. In the work entitled A mere breath, I have made a paper pulp drawing of the tree stump on scrim fabric. The paper pulp was made with torn-up discarded documents and educational material from a school in Cape Town. As such, A mere breath is also the discarded knowledge living on in an image of a tree stump, realigning the material (paper) with a fragile representation of its source (wood).

The three boat-like installations on exhibition are also derived from trees. They are constructed from fragments of makoros (canoes dug out from the trunks of trees) that were found on a Free State farm, where they were used as decorative plant containers. It was a poignant find, considering that its ancestor, the Dufuna Canoe, found in Nigeria and excavated in 1994, was carbon-dated as 8,000 years old. The Dufuna Canoe is concrete evidence of ancient transportation over waterways and seas, evoking a gentler way of life using indigenous knowledge systems.

The dugout canoes in my work serve as powerful symbols of navigation and journey. Once vessels of survival and trade, the decayed fragments of the canoes now embody the stories and histories of the cultures they represent. By repurposing these canoes using a range of paper-making techniques, I seek to highlight the transformative power of materials and the knowledge embedded in them. In the White Paper Boat², the makoro is overloaded with A4-sized handmade paper sheets, juxtaposing a remnant of an ancient way of living with vestiges of colonialism and bureaucracy. My aim is to suggest the tragedy of the loss of tradition and culture. The boat-like installations in this exhibition are a continuation of my investigation of the motif of the boat and the meanings it generates in the context of displacement. I am interested in how the boat, as a means of displacement, can be a metaphor for the traumatic experience of loss. Traveling over water, which is a symbol of the unconscious, a boat has connotations of a safe container transporting the psyche over the treacherous waters of the unknown. However, the boats that I am creating in my art practice are all rendered impotent through their brokenness, implying the woundedness of the psyche of the displaced.

Through this exhibition, I aim to create a space for considering alternative ways to be in the world—a space of contemplation and a place that creates the potential to re-align our connections with everything that exists in the world around us.

A fundamental idea in many indigenous beliefs, kincentricity is a concept that centers relationships between kin and the idea that people should live in harmony with all living things. ‘White Paper’ refers to the official document issued by authorities or governments to outline policies. The title is used in an ironic way here, indicating the overbearing nature of bureaucracy.

View the Realign Exhibition Catalogue