Jenny Nijenhuis

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1969, Jenny Nijenhuis holds a BA FA (Hons) from the University of the Witwatersrand in (1993). After a career in corporate marketing and running her communications design agency, Nijenhuis returned to her art practice in 2012, focusing on sculpture and installation.

Her extensive background in communications, combined with a profound drive to understand human identity and its susceptibility to religious, political, and societal dogma, fuels her artistic exploration. Nijenhuis's work often probes existential questions: “Who am I?”; “What is freedom and does it exist?”; and “How do we become caught up in the belief that we are what we are merely experiencing?”

Nijenhuis's impactful work has garnered international recognition, including an invitation to Cornell University in New York in early 2019 to deliver the keynote address at an event on global women's empowerment. She was a finalist in the 2017 Sasol New Signatures art competition and a PPC Imaginarium finalist in 2015. In 2014, she was a Lovell Tranyr Art Trophy finalist.

A notable intervention was her 2016 installation, "SA's Dirty Laundry", which brought awareness to the issue of rape in South Africa by hanging 3600 pairs of used panties across Johannesburg streets, symbolising the estimated daily rapes. This powerful project aimed to shift societal perceptions around love and power. As part of this initiative, Nijenhuis also co-curated "The Things We Do for Love"Nijenhuis co-curated at SoMa Art + Space.

Nijenhuis held her debut solo exhibition at Lizamore & Associates in 2015 and has participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout South Africa. Her sculptures are held in private collections.

Her art profoundly explores identity and our place in the world, primarily through the human body and its traces. She uses direct clay modeling to create life-sized figures, giving them a compelling real-world presence, and incorporates trace elements in smaller installations to explore presence. Nijenhuis is particularly interested in how stereotypical beliefs lead to behavioral patterns that can trap us in binary oppositions, fostering conformity and a "radical absence of freedom." Her work addresses isolation, vulnerability, manipulation, gender, and the female experience, ultimately seeking to redefine perceptions in a world she describes as dominated by ego, science, and material excess. She believes art can be a powerful medium for redefinition, empowering us to change how we see things.