Exploring the Depths of Emotion through Meditations on Resentment – A Conversation with the 2024 Sasol New Signatures Winner, Miné Kleynhans
Miné Kleynhans with her artwork Meditations on Resentment. Cherrywood, brass, sand and found objects, 70 x 43 x 74cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sasol New Signatures.
Miné Kleynhans is the overall winner of the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition 2024. She has extensive experience as an artist, project manager, and facilitator. She has participated in a variety of experimental and large-scale international creative projects, including her role as a lead artist in the It’s My City project during the Vrystaat Art Festival in 2016. Kleynhans graduated with a Master in Fine Art (Cum Laude) from the University of the Free State in 2017 and was an artist in residence at the Brashnar Creative Project in Macedonia in 2018. Her winning work, Meditations on Resentment, invites participants into a personal ritual of confronting and expressing resentment through a symbolic process of writing in the sand and revealing a brass thorn – an interactive meditation on this complex emotion.
Tell us your reaction when you received the news that your work had been selected.
When I heard I was a finalist, my heart started thumping – I was thrilled and excited.
Is this the first time you have entered the competition? If so, why and if not, how many times and why is this competition vital for you?
I entered before in 2019. My work was selected at the regional entry point but didn’t make it further than that. The Sasol New Signatures Art Competition is important because it has such a large national reach. It brings emerging artistic voices together from all over the country and provides ample support that would significantly impact winners’ future careers. It is very encouraging to have been selected as a finalist.
Tell us a little about your artistic journey up until the point of entering Sasol New Signatures 2024.
I studied Fine Arts at the UFS, where I also completed my Master’s degree. After that, I continued to create new work, exhibit, enter competitions, and apply for residency whenever I could. As is probably the case for most artists who are also employed, I have only been able to create work very sporadically, and I feel that my own conceptual language only very recently started to emerge and solidify.
Who has had the most significant influence on your career as an artist to date?
I have been fortunate to have Willem Boshoff as a co-supervisor, and I have been privileged to get to know him and his work over several years. The depth and scale of his artistic thinking are somewhat daunting, but they have also made a lasting impression on me.
Tell us a little about why you created the piece you submitted.
I am interested in articulating suppressed, unnoticed or hidden things that shape or are shaped by people’s habitual thinking and emotional patterns. In the case of this particular work, I was party to situations and discussions in which ‘resentment’ was emphasised. It is an emotional state that is hard to admit to and share openly. It has an underhanded – semi-conscious quality, yet it is such a strong current in peoples’ lives. ‘Sanctioning’, the expression of resentment, felt like a dangerous thing to do, but it also has a stranglehold on your emotional lives and should be spoken about.
Miné Kleynhans, Meditations on Resentment. Cherrywood, brass, sand and found objects, 70 x 43 x 74cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sasol New Signatures.
Tell us about your preferred medium/s …and why?
I have been using solid wood, copper, and brass in my work recently, but I have also used many other mediums. I enjoy wood because it also seems to ‘reveal’ itself to you (the grain), and you have to adapt the ‘shape’ of your concept to it – which makes the work stronger, in my opinion.
When people view your work – what reaction/response are you hoping to create?
I really hope that it makes people want to physically interact with it. Maybe even that it has some kind of seductive quality. Although it might be difficult to navigate in a gallery setting, I did create it with the hope that it would facilitate a real ‘ritual’ and prompt people to engage with these less charitable or forgiving aspects of themselves.
How would winning this competition change your life?
It will definitely change the way that I see my artistic practice and myself as an artist in a very real, exciting, but perhaps even scary way. I think that it will only dawn on me much later.
Which South African artists do you admire and why?
That’s a very hard question to answer since there are so many. I already mentioned Willem Boshoff, but Bronwyn Katz and Sonya Rademeyer come to mind as artists who seem to listen to deep, ephemeral currents underneath the way things are, which I admire.
For more information, please visit the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition.
