The Absence of Serenity

"The Absence of Serenity is an artwork that is part of a body of work created for an exhibition titled ""When There Are No Words"". “When there are no words” is a solo exhibition presented by curator and artist Olwethu De Vos. Through the exhibition De Vos contemplates a momentary loss of words and proposes art as a profound form of expression and communication. Existence often hands us varied encounters at distinct times of our lives, and time frequently presents us with flashes that tend to render us speechless. Taking countless forms, the moments are sometimes poignant and painful experiences that may overwhelm us, moments of immense joy, or moments of boundless beauty, and at other occasions, silence is found in the most mundane of experiences. De Vos’s comprehensive body of work encompasses emotive and evocative elements within her exploration of present and predetermined philosophies of beauty and gender within spatial, cultural, and capitalist modes of being, represented through various renditions of figures and portraiture in delicate and deliberate artistic expressions. The featured works further include her current exploration of abstraction where she brings together varied visual elements, layering, and combining them in her exploration of the exertion of predetermined cultural practices on the human body during puberty."