Genevieve Clarke (left), Cornelia Faasen, Acting Dean of Student Affairs, and Shanse Weyers. Clarke and Weyers are both final-year Fine Arts, whose work is exhibited at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery on the Bloemfontein Campus. Photo: Hatsu Mphatsoe

Once again, the students of the University of the Free State’s Department of Fine Arts have executed thought-provoking artworks which also are a vehicle for social cohesion. On 13 April 2016, the works of final-year Fine Arts students were exhibited at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery on the Bloemfontein Campus as the annual exhibition was launched.

The exhibition is titled Motswako/Miscellany/Mengelmoes, a theme evident in the works on display. The theme carries over from last year, with the students’ artworks engaging deeply with the topic of social cohesion. The exhibition will run until 13 May 2016, allowing the public time to engage with the works.

The Acting Dean of Student Affairs, Cornelia Faasen, had the honour of opening the exhibition with a moving speech in which she observed how the students’ works reflect on what the role of the artist is and should be in society. “Without the artist, there is no reflection,” Faasen said. The curator of the gallery, Angela de Jesus, explained that students were very much involved in the process of putting together the exhibition, which gave them the “opportunity to curate at every level”.

The artworks embodied the various disciplines and mediums in which students are majoring, including sketching, videography, digital media, and print-making.  With social cohesion as the golden thread running through the artworks, this diversity embodies the exhibition’s title, which defines a substance made by mixing other substances together.

In her closing remarks, Faasen asked viewers a haunting question: “What are these students trying to tell us?” In seeking to answer this question, one can expect to be engaged in a deep and meaningful way by artists revealing the “broken and fractured society” we live in.