Witnesses

In Witnesses, Franli Meintjes examines both physical and psychological vulnerability within the context of a magic realist landscape. This imagined realm, infused with storytelling and mythology, embodies the paradox of being both a sanctuary and a source of dread. Through this setting, Meintjes explores the complexities, contradictions, and uncertainties of living in the world today.

Drawing on her personal experiences of landscape in South Africa, particularly in and around the gold mining town of Odendaalsrus, where she lived in 2024, Meintjes explores the interconnectedness of memory, landscape, and architecture through a fibre-based installation. The materiality and processes embedded within the work engage with the ways in which architecture can be understood as a potentially unstable space, existing not only as part of an outer reality that we can touch and feel but also as part of an internal imaginary world.

Through processes such as cutting, tearing, and unraveling, Meintjes reflects on the shifting boundaries between permanence and impermanence, protection and vulnerability. The translucent hanging fabrics attempt to render structures that are ghost-like and unsettled. The images potentially belong to both the past and to an unknown future.

Alongside these works, she creates figurative and abstract textured pieces with punch needle, tufting, and knot techniques. In contrast to the depictions of architectural decay these hanging fibre structures evoke qualities of evolving organic life. Unlike photography, which often seems to freeze a moment in time, Meintjes’s fibre work expands time through its materiality and its labour-intensive processes.

Ultimately, the work lingers in the space between what is eroding and what is emerging, where fragile forms carry the residue of history while quietly pointing toward possible futures.