Jana Visser

an emptiness that breathes

(2022)

Weaving as thinking. Weaving as creation. Weaving as breathing.

The inwards/outwards passage of breath as a symbolic reflection on the gestures of weaving.

Weaving depends on constant rhythms and the entanglement of seemingly binary forces; the outwards giving horizontal weft and the inwards receiving vertical warp. Mediating between dualities of presence and absence; fullness and emptiness; active and passive; beginning and ending; giving and receiving, as well as internalities and externalities, Jana Visser seeks a logic of reciprocity and becoming through the framework of her weaving practice.

Emptiness, as represented by the warp threads, serves as a site of transformation where becoming and potentiality interweave – where sameness and otherness, or warp and weft meet. With a dynamic presence, it indicates the ability to be filled with content. It inhales. For as long as there is a warp waiting, there is a potential for continuing onwards and a weaving towards possibility.

Bio

Jana Visser (1997, Stellenbosch, South Africa) is a textile artist who is fascinated by the tactile and the slow. In 2019 she completed her Bachelor studies in Fine Art at Stellenbosch University. In the same year, she graduated with a Cum Laude and received the Fine Arts Award for Final Year Achievement. In 2021, she obtained a Bachelor’s Diploma in Textile Design from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Most recently, she completed her Master’s in Textile Design, also at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Visser’s work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and institutions in both South Africa and Belgium, and forms part of private collections in South Africa, Belgium and Germany.

The artistic process informs the conceptualization of her practice as she “makes her way into thinking.” Searching for a certain sensibility of direct, intuitive expression, she is captivated by the practice of weaving as both an art-making method and its conceptual capabilities. Her practice is grounded in an openness to uncertainty, as she navigates between controlling method and media, whilst also considering internal and external relationships between matter, time and space. She views this as a vital source of meaning-making, and as a means to explore the viability of sensory perception and embodied experience. Her slow methods of making are an indication of patience in learning; spending enough time with her chosen medium in order to grasp both its material and symbolic potency. There is a desire to know more about the self, the value of rhythm and gesture, and how thread may serve as a conduit through which to access a dimension beyond the tangible.

"Relying on a desire for subtlety, sensitivity, effort and intricacy; my intention is to create spaces of intimate observation and reflection in which layered meanings reveal themselves."