Jana Visser

Jana Visser is a textile artist and handweaver originally from Stellenbosch, South Africa. In 2019 she completed her Bachelor studies in Fine Art at Stellenbosch University. In 2021 she obtained a Bachelor’s Diploma in Textile Design from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. In the following year she completed her Master’s in Textile Design also at LUCA School of Arts for which she received a Magna Cum Laude. Her master's thesis titled, "an emptiness that breathes" was nominated for a Thesis Prize as well as the prestigious Dirk Lauwaert Award.

Her work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and institutions in both South Africa and Belgium, including the Design Museum in Ghent, and forms part of private collections in South Africa, Belgium, France and Germany. Recent exhibitions include Verweven/Entrelacés at Schönfeld Gallery, Zomer Salon at Kunsthal Ghent, and I try to imagine how your texture felt like at St. Peter’s Church of Ypres. In October 2022, some of her textile works were on display during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Her work titled “in the almost” was shortlisted for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize of 2023. In May 2024, Visser had her first solo exhibition titled, Breathing Matter, at Queens Brussels Gallery in Brussels, Belgium.

Captivated by weaving as both an art-making method and its conceptual capabilities, Visser seeks a logic of reciprocity and becoming through the framework of her weaving practice. Grounding her practice in an openness to uncertainty, she navigates between controlling method and media, whilst considering relationships between matter, time and space. She views this as a source of meaning-making, and a means to explore the viability of sensory perception and embodied experience. Her methods are slow – requiring patience and time in order to grasp both their material and symbolic potency. There is a desire to know more about the self, the value of rhythm and gesture, and how thread may serve as a conduit for accessing a dimension beyond the tangible.

Her interest lies in the relation between weaving, breathing and thinking. The inwards-outwards passage of breath provides a symbolic reflection on weaving gestures, which also depend on constant rhythms and the entanglement of seemingly binary forces; the outwards giving horizontal weft and the inwards receiving vertical warp.