It seems I am getting to a place where I can say that making is meaning.
My reading took me to an article (Materiality & Process: The Physical Act and Properties of Materials as Central Meaning in Contemporary Art-Making Francis Ankyiah1 , Frederick Bamfo). Here, the idea is to rethink artistic meaning, going beyond a conceptual approach and focusing on the influence of process and materiality.
I agree with the idea that materiality recognises that materials are not neutral; they have a historical, cultural and symbolic value. Then it is also so that the choice of material is not arbitrary; it plays a vital role in the artistic process and the outcome. Each material possesses its own unique properties, textures, and capabilities, allowing artists to convey their intended message with depth and nuance.
In another blog I wrote: “I am thinking about how the materials I work with create a starting point for reflections on memory, community, and my relationship with place, and how this then continues to present in the next making. When working with or in nature—whether creating nest shapes, hollow forms, drawings, or weavings—I find myself continually meditating on the relationship between the interior and the exterior. Recently, I am more interested in why I choose a material. What does the material itself have to do with the work I produce? Is it about the final object, or is it purely conceptual? I am interested in where a material can take me. I am also aware that this is a space of conflict – how to hold so many paradoxes and uncertainties? I came upon Wu Hung and think I am at the place where I feel that I need to look at Material Art. To me it asks: “What does this material already know, carry, or resist—and how can I let that speak instead of forcing my own image onto it?”
Art historian Wu Hung’s formulation of Material Art (caizhi yishu) centers on a critical shift: moving away from using a material merely as a medium to represent an image, and instead allowing the material’s own history, physical reality, and agency to become the primary agent of meaning.
I now think this is the theoretical key to the entire Walk the Line project. It directly answers how the physical installation, my writing, my botanical observations, and my oral history conversations with Oukloof elders can connect.
The Renosterveld Flora (Nature Reclaiming the Form)
- What it carries/knows: The endangered Lapeirousia and Babiana growing through the gravel know the soil’s chemistry better than any human surveyor. They resist the industrial footprint of the railway by blooming directly out of the ballast.
- Letting it speak: You the scroll, placing pressed flora alongside Krupp steel will create a dialogical paradox: the rigid, linear industrial world versus the organic, cyclical return of native ecology.