Stellenbosch University
Specialisms: Jewelry / Silversmithing /
Location: Stellenbosch, South Africa
First Name: chandra
Last Name: ngomane
Specialisms: Jewelry / Silversmithing
Sectors:
My Location: Stellenbosch, South Africa
University / College: Stellenbosch University
Course / Program Title: Creative metal and jewellery desgn
My jewellery visualizes traumatic memory through transgenerational trauma transmission. I particularly look at jewellery as an intimate art form that acts as a vehicle that highlights the trauma that was experienced and is still present in post-apartheid South Africa. Through engaging with my jewellery, the performative act of witnessing takes place where the traumatic stories of apartheid are made tangible for the wearer. Trauma is an internal phenomenon that only individual experiencing it can "feel and touch", through jewellery I expand the feel and touch beyond the victims to the witness. Contemporary jewellery is a wearable art medium. Therefore, I see it as most suitable in creating a tangible and wearable object of witness through exploring jewellery's relationship with the body. Through my body of work, sensation and affect is the language that communicates the traumatic memories of the South Africans. By putting on the jewellery, one is metaphorically putting on their trauma, that lingers in not only the ones who experienced the traumatic event but in the generations that came after them.