Jill Joubert

Jill Joubert (b. 1954, Tzaneen, Limpopo) is a renowned South African artist, puppeteer, and teacher based in Cape Town. A founding member of the Handspring Puppet Company and former principal of the Peter Clarke Art Centre, she has made significant contributions to the arts through her work in puppetry and sculpture. Working primarily in wood, Joubert's art reflects her deep interest in sacred European and African art, as well as stories and folktales from around the world.

Her creative practice is inspired by the deeper meanings found in fairy tales, creation stories, and mythologies. This interest is evident in her MA dissertation, "Apple Girl: Ingesting and Transforming Apple Girl from Fairy Tale into Sculpture and Performance," and continues to influence her subsequent puppet plays and figurative sculptures.

Joubert's sculptures, often hybrid wooden figures, evoke spirit beings that exist in a liminal space, part human and part animal. She sources wood from felled trees and roots, whose shapes suggest the transformed characters they will become. Her work integrates diverse iconographies drawn from pre-Christian, Biblical, European, African, and Catholic sources. The embedded histories of recycled wood and found objects link the past with the present, blending the spiritual with the material.

Her art is characterized by its otherworldly forms and sometimes moving, jointed parts, creating an enchanting universe of saints and spirits. Joubert's works are more than static sculptures; they are spirit figures with an uncanny sense of life, capable of movement and animation.