Barbara Wildenboer South Africa, 1973

Barbara Wildenboer investigates the philosophical concept of aesthetics through a range of different mediums and processes. By exploring this concept alongside phenomena such as temporality, fractal geometry, and the interconnectedness of all living things, she exposes the connections between a myriad of life forms – from the microscopic to the immense.

Wildenboer’s primary focus is on environmental aesthetics, which she sees as encompassing both natural territories and human interaction with the natural realm. Her work is also concerned with the idea of the mathematical sublime (an aesthetical notion first developed by Immanuel Kant) and how the infinity and boundlessness of the universe transcend the limits of reason.

Wildenboer uses a combination of analogue and digital processes to produce a diverse and rich body of work that primarily consists of collages, photo- and paper constructions, installations, digitally animated photographic sculptures, and book art. 

Her recent body of work entitled "LOOT" is informed by a growing interest in how meaning is created and shaped by the encounter between Africa and Europe. The artist uses ‘appropriation’ to explore ideas around this. The use of appropriation is on the one side a reference to looted artifacts that have been expropriated from their origins but also to the manner in which Wildenboer usually engages with her medium (altered books and found images for collage), which has always involved appropriating different texts and reconfiguring them in some way. 

For the last years, she has sourced several images of various ancient artifacts originating from places such as Africa, Oceania, Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and the Americas and currently held in several different museums in Britain, Germany, France, and the U.S. She used these images to create what resembles ladders, totem poles, trees, or towers, consisting of assimilation of different relics, fertility figures, masks, vases, and architecture. 

These paper artifacts are curated and displayed to mimic the Western Museum in a manner that is idiosyncratic and absurd and is meant to draw attention to the multiple ways these objects could be viewed. The collaged paper sculptures echo how archaeological exhibitions are curated, placed on pedestals or in vitrines, and then spotlit to create the aura of an artwork that is far removed from the original functions of the objects being displayed. The result is some kind of documentary fiction / fictional documentary that references real things but becomes something else.