Anika Lotter
visual arts: creative metal and jewellery design
Stellenbosch University
Graduates: 2022
Specialisms: Accessories / Sustainable Fashion/Textiles / Textile Innovation/Textile Art
My location: Cape Town, South Africa
Anika Lotter
First Name: Anika
Last Name: Lotter
University / College: Stellenbosch University
Course / Program: visual arts: creative metal and jewellery design
Graduates: 2022
Specialisms: Accessories / Sustainable Fashion/Textiles / Textile Innovation/Textile Art
My Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Website: Click To See Website
About
I am a contemporary jewellery artist, born and raised on the ancient plains of the Karoo. I am continually inspired by the nature culture entanglement. Growing up in a farming community in a semi-desert I have always been aware of this deep connection we have to matter and the natural world. As designers we are able to cultivate and advocate for a better future through our design choices. I am currently doing my Masters in Visual Arts, where I look at regenerative design theory in the hopes of finding a more holistic approach to creating contemporary jewellery pieces. Jewellery as a creative practice has been around for centuries to communicate something about place, identity, belonging and beliefs. Our ancestors used materials from their natural surroundings, but as technologies and worldviews developed - so did jewellery as a medium. By acknowledging the good and bad systems from the past, I choose to create contemporary jewellery pieces from natural textiles and found objects to cultivate a more regenerative Karoo culture. Through a systems-thinking approach, my work constantly evolves and changes. I believe that our design and material choices have the ability to: not only inspire, but to impact and play into matters ever-evolving nature. As an artist and designer, I hope to create work that extends the Karoo environments affect - as a responsible custodian of its ecology.
I am the seventh generation of Lötter’s inhabiting the piece of farmland we call Weltevreden. Although this sounds like a long time, in context, it is not. In the early 20th century, Karoo fossil hunting influenced scientific thought, in acknowledging that mammals arose from reptiles. The fossils in the Graaff Reinet district date to about 250million years ago. My main areas of focus include; the physical landscape, scientific history through palaeontology, and literature such as The Plains of Camdeboo, and Weltevreden family archives. As I investigate the act of storytelling through culture and science, the greater landscape can almost be understood as a form of visual storytelling. It communicates something of its cultural and natural history through matter, objects and text. By using materials directly found in the area I hope to reference this landscape through my jewellery practice and extend the homage to a new field where the body becomes the landscape.
Competitions
