About
NEXXUS is an art experience that seeks to explore diverse cultural connection, viewed though a curatorial lens of fragmentation. The art experience is sculpted through a visual arts exhibition, a video installation, various live-art performances and facilitated open public conversations. The focus of the project is to explore whether cultural fragmentation which is rooted in historical trauma can be reassembled into new opportunities of cultural connection, if respectfully acknowledged.
The interdisciplinary collaborative component is the overall binder to the exhibition and includes artists that are all diverse in race, culture, gender, age, and language. At a broader level, collaboration links NEXXUS to the larger public via two public conversations facilitated by Creative Research Laboratory (TUT).
Complex change can only be achieved through collaboration, as it takes the work of many ‘actors’ working together towards the shared goal of cultural ex/change. The significance of NEXXUS is through engaging, inter-cultural dialogue where new cultural connections can begin to be incubated.
Collaborators to the NEXXUS project are all from a diverse race, culture, age, artistic discipline and even province: Diana Ferrus / Garth Erasmus / Masai Sepuru / Sonya Rademeyer / Caroline Sohie / Franco Prinsloo / Refiloe Lepere / Karina Lemmer / Creative Exchange
Sonya Rademeyer / "Prayer to the Young Moon" / 2020 - 2023
Collaborators to the overall NEXXUS project
Sonya Rademeyer
Sonya Rademeyer is a visual artist born in Zimbabwe and residing in South Africa. Placing her work at the intersection of art, science and consciousness she seeks to visualize empathy through deep listening. Using both sound and movement as the vehicles to explore empathy she places her work within culture at large. Likening an imaginary geographical space within her body as ‘in-between’, she views the fragility of deep empathy to be visualized from an embodied space. Since 2018 she started incorporating a performative element to her drawing practice and has done public performative drawing both locally and internationally. Her interest in exploring empathy through sound and movement has been published in Interalia Magazine (UK), an on-line platform at the intersection of art, science and consciousness that encourages debate and critical thinking. Her experimental collaborative performance Mis/Seen funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and showcased at VAF 2019 and was nominated for a Blinker Award. VAF commissioned Sonya for new work which was funded by NAti for VAF 2020. She is a keen inter-disciplinary collaborator and showcased two collaborate video works at vNAF 2020. A graduate of Willem de Kooning Academie (Netherlands) she has participated in multiple international group shows as well as representing South Africa at the 2008 DAK’Art Biennale (Senegal). More recently, she was selected as research-artist into the AIR Residency associated with the University of Johannesburg (2022-2023). The Zimbabwe National Gallery has selected Rademeyer for their International Artistic Residency commencing May 2024.
Dr Diana Ferrus
Dr Diana Ferrus is a writer, poet, storyteller and a creative writing workshop facilitator. Her work has been published in various collections and some serve as prescribed texts for high school learners. She also works closely with schools especially
matriculants. In January/February each year she visits different schools as part of the Stellenbosch University WOW project that speak to learners about their prescribed poems. Diana is also involved in various community projects. She works with the Macassar Studio Light project, a project started by Clint Abrahams, an architect from Macassar who wishes to instill a pride in its community of who they are and how Macassar was built and their role in it. Furthermore she works with a group of women in Stellenbosch who are writing up their stories. She is also closely working with the Pniel poets who participated for the first time in the Adam Small literary festival in February 2020. All these projects are ongoing. She also works with the Railtoun Foundation in Swellendam where she will present creative writing workshops. An outreach programme to Loxton in the Karoo was cancelled because of the lockdown. She also works closely with the Centre for the Book who has graciously helped as part of their community publishing project, the first collection of poetry by “Die Mengelmoes”, a grassroots women writers group lead by Diana. She also performs her own work and perform in collaboration with other artists.
Diana is internationally known and acclaimed for the poem that she wrote for the indigenous South African woman Sarah Baartman who was taken away from her country under false pretences and paraded as a sexual freak in Europe. This poem touched the heart of the French Senate and upon hearing it they voted unanimously that her remains should come home. This poem is published in the French Law, a first in French history.
Diana’s work has had and still has a bearing and influence on matters of race, sex and reconciliation. In 2012 Diana received the inaugural Mbokodo Award for poetry. Diana’s third book, “Die vrede kom later” was launched on 27 July 2019. In April 2022 Diana was awarded an honorary doctorate by Stellenbosch University (SU), in honour for using her writing and poetry to educate and empower whilst displaying commitment to the development of a new generation of writers, utilising her art to offer a tool of expression to others as well.
Masai Sepuru
Masai Sepuru graduated in the 2016 with bachelor’s degree in performing arts technology at the Tshwane university of technology. He is the director at Views Avenue, a production company that aims to build a bridge between the fringe and the mainstream. With his company, they have staged about four productions and 16 poetry showcases. He has written and directed three plays in that has gone to be staged in national theatre including, the south African state theatre, the Joburg theatre and the market theatre.
Masai is also a director at Jonga creation, a non-profit organisation that aims to shine light on the otherwise neglected social ills and disasters. They also aim to take theatre to the people that can’t afford to come to the big theatres. Masai is a set designer and a scenic painter, working mostly with up and coming directors who wouldn’t have access to big professional set designers. He has designed over 20 plays since he graduated in 2016. Masai is as a poet has won numerous slam competitions holding four championships and two runner ups. He has been invited twice to read at Poetry Africa and in 2019 and was part of three other poets to travel to Sweden to perform at their poetry and book festival. In addition to other art disciplines he practice, he is a fine artist. In 2022 he organised and curated his first exhibition “the dichotomy of light and shadow”, exhibiting 20 art pieces. Masai is definitely forgetting to add somethings but these are things he is most proud of and by the time you read this bio he would have done something else.
Caroline Sohie
Caroline Sohie is an architect, curator and lecturer active between London, Brussels and Cape Town.
Moving between speculative design research, strategy, architecture and master planning, her design agency INSTINCT is engaged with the potentialities of a dynamic world and offers an alternative methodology for approaching complex design challenges that synthesises instinct and intuition, with intelligent investigation.
Caroline’s practice further encompasses the curation and design of interactive experiences questioning contemporary urban realities, ranging from ephemeral installations, exhibitions and academic studio events, including CITYDESIRED (2014) with African Centre for Cities at UCT and #FREESPACE (2019) held in partnership with Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Caroline is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences. Her international teaching and reviewing has included; the Architectural Association London, The Berlage Institute Amsterdam, University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, University of Cape Town and TU Delft. Since 2017 she leads a Thesis Masters Studio.
Garth Erasmus
Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician based in Cape Town, South Africa.
He studied Art at Rhodes University and was an art teacher for twenty years at Zonnebloem Children`s Art Centre in District Six, Cape Town. In the eighties he made a name for himself as an anti-Apartheid artist with a major collection of his work in the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. As a cultural worker and community activist he is a founder member of numerous community-based arts organisations, for example, Vakalisa Arts Associates, Thupelo Artists Workshop, Community Reflections and Greatmore Street Artists’ Studios. He is a member of the Khoisan activist group Khoi Khonnexion who toured European music theatre festivals in 2018-19 with the production House of Falling Bones based on the Namibian genocide of the Nama and Herero people by the German colonialists. He was appointed as a research Fellow at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation.
Karina Lemmer
Karina Lemmer holds a PhD, which examines multilingual embodied acting in the South African context. This was the outcome of various creative research projects that explored multilingual performance in the South African context. She is a senior lecturer at the TUT Department of Performing Arts where she specializes in voice and acting. Karina is also an editor for IDEA and is certified as a Lessac Kinesensics Facilitator and a Meisner acting coach. Karina has worked with actors on several theatre productions and films. She is a Naledi nominated director and theatre maker who has adapted and directed several classical texts and has created original multilingual South African Theatre within the academic context and professional platforms.
Dr Refiloe Lepere
Dr. Refiloe Lepere is a black feminist playwright, theatre director, drama therapist, journalist, and facilitator. Her areas of expertise are activism, postcolonial and feminist theories in performance studies, and participatory art. Her work using therapeutic theatre weaves history, statistics, and personal narratives to address issues of social justice, trauma, the intersectional identities of black women, and the performance of labour. Her research examines how race functions and, as a result, frames and shapes our perception of the world. She teaches African Performance Studies, Directing, and Scriptwriting at Tshwane University of Technology. She has delivered guest lectures at Howard University, Georgetown University, and New York University. She contextualizes her work by focusing on how we consume, interpret, and respond to stories within the larger literature of black feminist aesthetics and drama therapy.
She was a guest editor for the Drama Therapy Review-Journal issue called "Breathing Beyond Borders: Racial Justice and Decolonial Healing Practices” She has contributed to several anthologies. She recently concluded a residency at The Woodshed: A Center for Art, Thought, and Culture. Racial Justice Institute at Georgetown University Her international plays include Recipes, Remedies, and Rumors (US), Between Sisters, Postcards: Bodily Preserves (Germany, SA, and USA), Money for Shoes (Botswana, SA, and Swaziland), Heading Out (US & UK), Songs for Khwezi (US & SA), Disappearing Act, and Black in the Box (US & Canada).
Franco Prinsloo
Franco Prinsloo is an award-winning composer and conductor from Pretoria, South Africa. He creates in a diverse variety of contemporary classical styles with a specific focus on choral music, vocal music, and music for theatre.
He has been the Musical Director for the Nedbank Arts and Culture Trust Performing Arts Scholarships from 2014 to the present. In 2019 he received the prestigious ACT IMPACT AWARD for Young Professionals from the Nedbank Arts and Culture Trust for composition. He was nominated in 2022 for two Naledi Theatre Awards and in 2023 for another, for this original soundtrack for the one-man play “Plesierengel”
He is an active composer in the contemporary music scene in South Africa. He has been commissioned by prominent choirs including: The King’s Singers; Kammerchor| Vocalisti (Hans-Joachim Lustig, Germany) and the acclaimed overtone singer Anna- Maria Hefele; The Akustika Chamber Singers (Christo Burger, SA); The University of Stellenbosch Choir (André van der Merwe, SA); The University of Pretoria Camarata (Michael Barrett, SA).
Prinsloo established and conducts the semi-professional chamber choir, Vox Chamber Choir, in 2017. The choir received a golden medal at the Interkultur World Choir Games in Tswane in 2018 and another golden medal at the International Anton Bruckner Competition in Linz, Austria in 2019, during Vox Chamber Choir’s tour of Europe. The choir performed in notable venues and premiered Prinsloo’s new mass, Missa Brevis “San Marco”, in the Basilica San Marco in Venice, Italy. In 2021 Prinsloo embarked on recording his easter oratorio for chorus, organ and percussion entitled Kruis van Liefde. In 2022 the album of Kruis van Liefdewas nominated for two SAMA-awards including “Best Group of the Year” for Franco Prinsloo and Vox Chamber Choir as well as “Best Classical Music Album” for Kruisvan Liefde. Prinsloo expanded on the success of Kruis van Liefde by releasing another large-scale Christmas oratorio in 2022.
A selection of his choral music is published by Helbling Verlag (Austria) and available worldwide online. More of Prinsloo’s works will be published by Helbling in 2021. In 2022 Prinsloo composed the original soundtrack for the one man play, Plesierengel by acclaimed South African writer, Leon van Nierop. In 2021 Prinsloo received two nominations at the prestigious Naledi Theatre Awards for best original soundtrack for a theatrical play for his work on Mr President produced by the South African State Theatre as well as a nomination for best sound design for the same production.
Prinsloo composed a contemporary choral musical: "Naledi - An African Journey" which had its debut in February 2016, both at the South African State Theatre and at the Choralies Festival in France by the University of Pretoria Youth Choir (UPYC). The work was performed in April 2018 by the Cor di Juni Santa Christina in Val Gardena, Italy. Furthermore, the work has been numerously staged in South Africa and abroad with notable performances by the South African Youth Choir at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town and a performance and album recording by the Vox Chamber Choir in 2019. "Naledi - An African Journey" will be published worldwide by Helbling Verlag in 2021. The work was again produced in 2023 by the St. Marys
Furthermore, he has worked as arranger and conductor on several international album productions including composer from the United Arab Emirates, Ihab Darwish’s new work, Hekayat: Symphonic Tales, presented at the 2020 Abu Dhabi Festival and full length commercial album distributed by Universal Studios.
Prinsloo has a unique approach to choral rehearsals. He strives to combine a visceral musical experience with voice technique, a specific focus on expression in the musical phrase, and an exploration of each chorister’s musical expression. This results in a unique and beautiful choral sound and musical interpretation that has been praised by music critics.
In 2021 he received a Fellowship in Music Composition from the London College of Music. In 2022 Prinsloo presented original work and group discussions at the Creative Research Laboratory. In 2023, Prinsloo also received the coveted Medal of Honor for Art from the South African Academy of Science and Art.
All images by Jemima Kola
https://www.mymalaikaphotography.com/
FUNDERS
with deep gratitude
