After successfully facilitating the release of resentment through her installation piece, Meditations on Resentment, Miné Kleynhans emerged as the winner of the 2024 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition. As the winner, she received a R100,000 cash prize and a solo exhibition opportunity at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2025.
The Sasol New Signatures Art Competition stands as a testament to the whirlpool of South Africa’s collective creativity and the transformative power of the artists’ narrative towards positive change.
This is exemplified by the winning piece, Meditations on Resentments, where it sanctions the experience and expression of resentment by probing the complexities and intricacies of human emotion while encouraging introspection and healing.
Through an immersive process, viewers engage with this suppressed emotion by temporarily lifting societal constraints. Participants kneel before the artwork, pouring sand onto its indented surface, then inscribing their resentments with a sharpened brush. In a symbolic release, they sweep the sand away, revealing a brass thorn – a poignant reminder of resentment’s lingering presence.
Pfunzo Sidogi, Chairperson of the Sasol New Signatures Competition, noted that this year’s judging process was particularly challenging, with judges unanimously praising the winning artworks as “subtly compelling,” “poignant,” and “technically virtuosic.”
Sidogi attributed this consensus to art’s unique ability to transcend cultural, racial, linguistic, and personal differences. To Sidogi, “Artists are using their creativity to respond to, reflect on, and make artistic sense of the complexities of our world today,” and this translates to “an aesthetic of Ubuntu.”
Featuring the 2024 winners and finalists, the Sasol New Signatures exhibition runs from the 5th of September to the 3rd of November, 2024, at the Pretoria Art Museum (corner of Francis Baard and Wessels streets, Arcadia Park, Pretoria). As an immersive showcase, it invites viewers to engage with art that unifies and enlightens, sparking new insights and collective growth.
