Janine Joles

"As a South African of European descent, my art is rooted in questions of belonging and displacement. This lived experience is central to how I approach my creative practice and its ongoing investigation into hybridity and transformation. Working in figurative ceramics, I respond to the past intuitively, treating it as an emotional memory carried forward through fragmented images and stories. Within my work, clay functions as both material and metaphor. My process relies on the physical act of hand-building and layering; through the manipulation of clay and glaze, forms and meanings change at each stage of making. This act of fragmentation and reconstruction becomes a visual language that directly mirrors the fluid, evolving nature of identity. The resulting hybrid figures exist between familiar and fictional spaces, drawing simultaneously on history and imagination. Rather than fixing meaning or binding the work to specific labels, these narrative-driven creations remain entirely open to shifting interpretations. My sculptures are intended to communicate through their material presence and symbolic weight, offering forms that feel both intimately individual and universal at the same time."