Joani Groenewald

Bio

Joani is a lecturer in the Visual Arts Department, as well as a jewellery designer, goldsmith and artist. She sees her technical grounding, as a medium that allows her to make conceptual art. She graduated with a Bachelor in Visual Art (Creative Jewellery - and Metal Design) degree from Stellenbosch University in 2009. After graduation, she continued her technical training, and in 2011 she qualified as a goldsmith. In March 2015 she successfully completed her Masters in Visual Arts degree at Stellenbosch University. Currently, she is enrolled for a PhD in Jewellery and Object Design at PXL-MAD Hasselt and Stellenbosch University.
In 2018 Joani won the South African contemporary Jewellery awards and in 2019 she was awarded the second place in the Jewellery category of the PPC Imaginarium Awards.

Statement

Joani views contemporary jewellery as a medium through which one can critically reflect upon one’s social and political environment. Her research interests are memory studies and narrative specifically in relation to a South African context. She continues to make art that feeds to and from these research interests. Her art questions the stability of memory and narrative while also challenging the traditional function of jewellery.
In her more recent work, she takes a satirical stance against popular-culture and consumer culture as an experienced form within a South African context.
In her latest series of works entitled The Seven Deadly Seductions she is Inspired by the religious concept of the seven deadly sins. In this series, she humorously challenges the seductiveness of unethical behaviour, especially within the framework of the current South African political environment. The pieces are personal interpretations and abstractions of form, material and colour, which takes a satirical stance against popular culture and the consumer oriented lifestyle that so many South Africans have become accustom to. They portray negative character traits as jewels, which confront the meaning of status symbols. The work challenges perceptions through the influential symbolic power of jewellery, specifically as a means to communicate identity and social status.  
 

CV