PINK PONK: EXHIBITION PREVIEW AND INTERVIEW

We popped into the /A WORD OF ART Gallery again yesterday afternoon to check in with /AWOA resident, Pink Ponk (Veronica Casellas Jimenez) from Buenos Aires, who was busy preparing her installation which will be shown alongside fellow resident Yumanizumu exhibition – Is In To You – which opens tonight.

How has your experience of making art in South Africa been?
South africa means to me: magic, where dreams are becoming reality. So this experience should be like this around the whole world, People working together for to make art and share with others this experience in a very beautiful way. I’m really happy to have come here to /A WORD OF ART, because I have met inspiring people like Ricky, Yuma, Juma, Alma, Willard, Padraic, and Peter and I can keep adding names but I have to stop.

Would you say that there are similarities between Cape Town and your current home, Buenos Aires?
I’m from Caracas, Venezuela, I just moved to Buenos Aires 6 month ago, and it is completely different from here. Maybe i should say that Venezuela is more similar, because in fact we have a very big influence from Africa, so you easily can find the similarities in music, people, nature and landscape…

You work in a across a range of media from video to costume design to painting. What type of work can we expect from you on thursday?
I found this brazilian artist that talks about etcetara art, (Et cetera is a Latin expression that means “and other things”) and that is perfect to define what i do. This thursday is about DIY ( do it yourself movement) do things yourself, you can change whatever you need to change, your life, your dress, your wall or your world. Also you will experience about the new toy I just built myself, it’s an instrument that works when people touch and connect to it, and each-other.

Your work is visually very different to your fellow exhibitor Yumu’s. How do you feel your work complements each others?
Yuma and I really connect since the first day i arrived in Cape Town. We are connected in a beautiful way so I feel really happy I’m learning a lot from the wonders and insight of Yuma, and everybody that surrounds us, because behind /A WORD OF ART, there is a lot of beautiful people working and sharing in art, because they really believed in this change brought about through the art and this is amazing and unique.

What are your plans for the rest of your residency?
I hope to surprise you a little bit, so I’m not going to say everything we are planning, but for a start Willard, Kambeva and Juma Mkwela, who work with /A WORD OF ART and Write on Africa have invited me to work with the children in the communities. I hope to teach them how to use their abilities to create art from the things that they have and also teach a little bit of sewing art, because as Ricky said, “Alot of the mothers of the kids know how to sew but now we are going to add another level of insight, to show the kids that with this tool you can also make art.”

You can check out Pink Ponk’s residency blog out over here.

The show opens tonight at the /A WORD OF ART gallery space and only runs for two days. You don’t want to miss out. RSVP over here. Check out fellow resident, Yumanizumu’s residency blog out over here and the /A WORD OF ART website over here, for more info about their residencies and projects.

If you missed our interview and photos with Yumanizumu yesterday, you can find it here.