Werner Ungerer (b. 1978, Upington) is a Cape Town-based visual artist and poet whose practice centres primarily on the hand-written word, calligraphy, and the materials and techniques of fine writing. Self-taught, he works with language as image, treating the written mark as a vessel capable of holding grief, silence, and the weight of the unsaid. His practice has expanded to include collage and needlecraft, especially embroidery.
His work moves between the intimate and the monumental, drawing on personal history and the body as a site of survival. These concerns find their fullest expression in I Walk on Gilded Splinters, his current exhibition at Nel on Long Gallery, which accompanies a self-published poetry collection of the same name. The work charts grief and family crisis with an unflinching quietness.
Ungerer has exhibited widely across Cape Town since 2008, including solo exhibitions at Mullers Gallery (Sine Die, 2017) and Artist Admin (smalls/intimates/privates, 2022), and group shows at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Whatiftheworld, and Blank Projects, among others. He has also curated the group exhibition Coven at Mullers Gallery in 2025.
His writing has appeared in the anthology Yes I Am (Junketts Publishing, 2010), alongside contributors including Damon Galgut and Sir Anthony Sher. He lives and works in Muizenberg, Cape Town.
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Werner Ungerer (b. 1978, Upington) is a Cape Town-based visual artist and poet whose practice centres primarily on the hand-written word, calligraphy, and the materials and techniques of fine writing. Self-taught, he works with language as image, treating the written mark as a vessel capable of holding grief, silence, and the weight of the unsaid. His practice has expanded to include collage and needlecraft, especially embroidery.
His work moves between the intimate and the monumental, drawing on personal history and the body as a site of survival. These concerns find their fullest expression in I Walk on Gilded Splinters, his current exhibition at Nel on Long Gallery, which accompanies a self-published poetry collection of the same name. The work charts grief and family crisis with an unflinching quietness.
Ungerer has exhibited widely across Cape Town since 2008, including solo exhibitions at Mullers Gallery (Sine Die, 2017) and Artist Admin (smalls/intimates/privates, 2022), and group shows at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Whatiftheworld, and Blank Projects, among others. He has also curated the group exhibition Coven at Mullers Gallery in 2025.
His writing has appeared in the anthology Yes I Am (Junketts Publishing, 2010), alongside contributors including Damon Galgut and Sir Anthony Sher. He lives and works in Muizenberg, Cape Town.
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