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16 March 2018 Photo Xolisa Mnukwa
Final-year Fine Art students exhibit their work
Petra Schutte describes the “My Wereld – wat sien jy” canvas.
The annual final-year student exhibition of the Department of Fine Arts is underway, with artists such as Danielle Pretorius, Petra Schutte, Dienka Staal and Robynne Gouws showcasing their art at the Johannes Stegman Gallery on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS).

“My artwork grapples with a sense of destiny or chance,” said Danielle Pretorius. It resembles her memories of Alkanstrand, a beach she visited as a child growing up in Richards Bay. She describes her art studio as a temporary, substitute dwelling place of reflection in which her artistic genius comes alive. 

Final-year student Dienka Staal explained that her artwork drawn from life on her family farm in Kalkfontein, Free State. It depicts her memories and involvements with farming, as well as the elements of power and ownership. She employed colours that suggest flesh, bruises, and wounds in order to equate the farm landscape with the human body. She added that her inspiration was in recalling her childhood.

“My work is the result of a growing fascination with bodily movement which coincides with my love of depicting the human body,” said final-year Fine Arts student Robynne Gouws. She said her artwork had the ability to evoke emotions that elicited different empathetic responses. Gouws further outlined that audiences would be able to project their own sense of equilibrium onto her work which in essence would help them appreciate the meaning of her drawings.

Petra Schutte said unconventional objects such as small animal skulls, used tea bags, hair and insects had always fascinated her and subsequently inspired her artworks, revealing an unknown and unexplored territory in art. 

Their art will be on display until 29 March 2018. The Johannes Stegman Gallery at the UFS Sasol Library is open from Monday to Friday for viewing.

News Archive

UFS academic delivers inaugural lecture on challenges confronting political science in the 21st century
2012-10-12

Prof. Hussein Solomon.
Photo: Stephen Collett
12 October 2012

This week Prof. Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Governance delivered his inaugural lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS).

In his lecture, “Challenges confronting political science in the 21st century, A South African perspective”, Prof. Solomon explored five challenges to academic political science in general and to South African political scientists in particular.

The challenges include the need to localise international relations theory with an emphasis on the emancipatory dimensions; exploring the nexus between technology and politics; incorporating political anthropology into mainstream political science syllabi; rising to the challenge of governing Africa’s cities; and the dangers of over-specialisation in an era that demands the use of a broader academic lens.

According to Prof. Solomon, political science has come a long way from those heady days in 1950 when Lasswell could confidently state that politics was about who gets what, when and how.

“Indeed, the world of 2012 scarcely resembles the world of 1950. Immanuel Wallerstein was correct in his assessment that the modern world system is coming to an end. As political scientists, we need to interrogate our existing knowledge constructs in relation to this rapidly changing reality. We need to indigenise international relations theory and emphasise creating an emancipatory and counter-hegemonic discourse.

We need to explore the nexus between technology and politics to deepen our democracy by empowering the margins in our societies. We need to embrace political anthropology as we strive to understand non-Western forms of governance. We need to use these understandings of traditional societies as we create hybrid forms of urban governance that stress inclusivity as we overcome the politics of identity and difference. We need to heed the call of De Tocqueville and create a new political science to understand the new times by supplementing disciplinary insights with those from other disciplines. In doing so, political science will once more regain its relevance to humanity in the twenty-first century,” Prof. Solomon said.
 

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