Artists

Born in October 1972 in Cape Town, Marieke Kruger is a practicing visual artist, educator and researcher living and working in Paarl, South Africa. She is also the Founder and Director of her recently established NPO Prison Art Business entitled O.I.P.A. Projects (Outsider/Insider Prison Art Projects), which focus on printmaking and drawing as therapeutic fine art mediums towards the ultimate goal of positive identity transformation and rehabilitation of prisoners with artistic talent inside as well as outside of prison confines. Kruger’s prospective PhD research as well as her own independent art practice are thus closely related (the one informing the other in an interactive or reciprocal process of experience and knowledge through the different fine art processes) to her art workshops and research in prisons.

“In my work I seek to explore the transformative potential of the empathic sublime through drawing. In these drawings of former prisoners, I explore the emotive and expressive qualities of the drawing material, surface and drawing trace as symbolic and autonomous means of communication. In so doing I explore the subliminal qualities of suggestive drawing trace as a possible autonomous entity and carrier of meaning. In my work I argue that our experiences in life are a product of processes. The “dialogue” between myself and the prisoner/s whom I draw becomes central towards attempting to grasp the marks and tones of life beyond our everyday understanding of humanity: I am his other and he is my other.”